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ITALIAN SCULPTURE OF 
THE RENAISSANCE 


BY 


L. J. FREEMAN, M.A. 


© Neto Work 
Por MACMILLAN COMPANY 


LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO.,Ltp. - 
1927 


All rights reserved 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


~ 


CoPyRIGHT, 1901, 

By ‘THE MACMILLAN COMPA 

Set up and electrotyped. Published Maveqder ; 
July; 2907. as a 

Reissued August, 1927. e 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


ON THE ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE . ; : ° ° 


dey ee 


THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 


CHAPTER 


I. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 
II. THE ORIGINS: THE PISANI 
Il. JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA °. 
IV. GHIBERTI . : , ; : : : h - 
V. DONATELLO 
VI. LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 


VII. THE MINOR SCULPTORS OF THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 
The Marble Workers : — 
Benedetto da Maiano, 1442-1497 . 
Desiderio da Settignano, 1428-1464 
Antonio Rossellino, 1427-1479. : : 
Mino da Fiesole, 1430-1484 . : ; f 
The Bronze Workers : — 
Andrea del Verrocchio, 1435-1488 
Antonio Pollajuolo, 1429-1498 . ; 3 A 


v 


PAGE 


21 


37 
51 
59 
71 
89 
99 
103 
105 


106 


107 


I12 


114 


vi CONTENTS — 


PAR Tt 


THE LATE RENAISSANCE 


CHAPTER ; 
I. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LATE RENAISSA 


II. THE SANSOVINI . : ‘ : 
Andrea Sansovino, 1460-1529 . 


Jacopo Sansovino, 1477-1570 


III. GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA . : 
IV. BENVENUTO CELLINI . ; z 


V. MICHELANGELO. . ae 
First Period . : : ; 


Second Period : - i 


VI. SCULPTURE OUTSIDE OF TUSCANY 


APPENDIX . A j : 3 


Poo rRALTIONS 


VERROCCHIO AND LEOPARDI. Bartolomeo Colleoni. Piazza SS. Gio- 


vannie Paolo, Venice. : : Z : : : Frontispiece 
PAGE 
NiccoLa Pisano. Pulpit. Baptistery, Pisa : 5 . facing 40 
ROMAN SARCOPHAGUS. Hippolytus and Phedra. Campo Santo, Pisa 
facing Al 
NICCOLA PISANO. Detail (Samson) of Pulpit. Baptistery, Pisa Facing 42 
GIOVANNI PISANO. Pulpit (Reproduction). Museum, Pisa Facing 44 
ANDREA PISANO. Panel. The Beheading of John. Baptistery Gates, 
Florence ; ‘ é : : : : : race “AO 
ORCAGNA. Tabernacle. Orsanmichele, Florence : SS SCE AF 
ORCAGNA. Sposalizio. Detail of Tabernacle. Orsanmichele, Florence 
Facing 48 
DELLA QuERCIA. The Expulsion. Panel in Gesso. Cathedral Li- 
brary, Siena . ; : , : ; Facing 55 
DELLA QUERCIA. Left of Portal. S.Petronio, Bologna . Facing 56 
JACOPO DELLA QuERCIA. Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto. Cathedral, 
Lucca ’ : : , : : Facing 58 
GHIBERTI. Panels of First Gates. Baptism of Christ, Left Panel. 
ANDREA PISANO. Panels of Gates. Baptism of Christ, Right Panel. 
Baptistery, Florence. : : ; , ; pmuranig. . 62 
GHIBERTI. Second Pair of Gates. Baptistery, Florence . Facing 64 
GHIBERTI. Panels of Eastern Gates. The History of Noah. Solo- 
mon and the Queen of Sheba. Baptistery, Florence . acing 67 
DONATELLO. St. George. Bargello, Florence . ; Pacing 76 
DONATELLO. Annunciation. S. Croce, Florence : Pe CIN 9S 
DONATELLO. Bronze David. Bargello, Florence : . Facing 80 


Vil 


Vili ILLUSTRATIONS 


LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. DONATELLO. Cantorie. Museo del Duomo, 


Florence : ; : : - : ‘ . facing 
DONATELLO. Gattamelata. Padua . : : ; . § Pacing 
DONATELLO. Bronze Pulpit. S. Lorenzo, Florence . . _. Pacing 
LucA DELLA RopsiA. Madonna of the Roses. Bargello, Florence 

facing 
Luca DELLA RopstA. Via dell’ Agnolo, Florence. Bargello, Florence 

facing 
ANDREA DELLA RoBBIA. The Coronation. Osservanza, Siena facing 
BENEDETTO DA MAIANO. Pulpit. S. Croce, Florence 25 Pace 
MatAno. Death of St. Francis. From Pulpit in S. Croce, Florence 

facing 
DESIDERIO. Tomb Marsuppini. S. Croce, Florence « . Facing 


ANTONIO ROSSELLINO. Tomb Cardinal of Portugal. S. Miniato, 
Florence Facing 


MINO DA FIESOLE. The Madonna and Saints. Cathedral, Fiesole 


facing 
MINO DA FIEsOLE. Madonna. Bust of a Woman. Bargello, Florence 

Facing 
VERROCCHIO. David. Bargello, Florence . : ; . Pace 
ANDREA SANSOVINO. Tomb Sforza. S.M. del Popolo, Rome Facing 
ANDREA SANSOVINO. Detail, Prudence. Tomb Sforza : Facing 
Jacopo SANSOVINO. Bacchus. Bargello, Florence. Penge 
GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA. Mercury. Bargello, Florence . Facing 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA. Rape of the Sabines. Loggia de’ Lanzi, 
Florence Facing 


PANEL OF BRONZE GATES. Visit of the Magi. Duomo, Pisa. (Period 


of Late Renaissance) . : ; . é ; . eee 
CELLINI. Perseus. Loggia de’ Lanzi, Florence . ; Jaci 
MICHELANGELO. Pieta. St. Peter’s, Rome ; : . facing 
MICHELANGELO. David. Accademia, Florence . ' . Facing 


MICHELANGELO. Tomb of Giuliano, Duca di Nemours. Giuliano, 
Night, Day. Sacristy S. Lorenzo, Florence . ‘ . ace 
MICHELANGELO. Tomb of Lorenzo, Duca di Urbino. “II Pensieroso,” 
Dawn, Twilight. Sacristy S. Lorenzo, Florence . : Facing 
MICHELANGELO. “Il Pensieroso,” Night. Sacristy S. Lorenzo, 


Florence . . ‘ , : . . . . Facing 


PAGE 


106 


108 


109 
112 
138 
140 
142 


148 
150 
154 
162 
171 
173 
177 


178 


184 


JOYMENT OF SCULPTURE 


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INTRODUCTION 
ON THE ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE 


Wuen the work of art, in becoming historic fact, 
has ceased to be esthetic fact, we are, in our deal- 
ings with it, justified in making the outer eye play 
the part of catspaw for the inner eye, in making the 
sense of sight minister to our “literary” and scien- 
tific rather than to our esthetic enjoyment. When, 
however, the work of art remains esthetic fact, that 
is, when there can be gained from it data of observa- 
tion which are so tinged with a certain sense pleasure 
that they are thereby distinguished from data gained 
through the action of any other sense or by any 
purely mental operation, then we are in common 
sense bound to regard such esthetic data as the 
primary, because peculiar, values of that work of art. 
And such other values as exist for us in a work of 
art (and there are many, both suggestive and _ scien- 
tific) will be properly regarded as secondary values, 
since they may be obtained from other objects, and, 


wherever obtained, take the same place in our favorite 
3 


4 INTRODUCTION 


mental operations. For instance, the historian and the 
philosopher may value the data gained from ancient 
art exactly as they value the data gained from ancient 
writers, and may work both into their schemes of 
things on the same terms. The scientist may classify 
Greek marbles as dispassionately as he would beetles, 
and presumably obtain in both instances the same intel- 
lectual pleasure. The man who prefers to use his data 
of observation imaginatively, be he dreamer or writer, 
may find in the work of art the same suggestions 
for his fancy that he finds in music, in natural 
objects, in the spoken word. 

It follows, then, that to fail to obtain the primary 
values of a work of art is to defraud oneself of enjoy- 
ment as truly as if one valued an orchid only for its 
rarity, or went to the opera merely for the sake 
of seeing the costumes. Unless the architect who 
studies Brunelleschi’s dome feels the unique beauty 
of its wonderful curve, unless the archzologist who 
dates a Greek vase is in some degree teased out of 
thought by its loveliness of form, unless the poet, to 
whom Botticellis Spring is a Lucretian allegory of 
the seasons, sees and feels the pattern of line inter- 
twining with line, he is as blind to primary values 
as were the Roman peasants who made a quarry of the 
Forum, and burned antique marbles to procure the 
lime for their wretched huts. Although he has made 


eet NIOYMENDTD OF SCULPTURE 5 


art serve his ends, he has refused a gift to be obtained 
nowhere else, the pleasure offered to his sense of 
sight. He could have exercised the same faculties in 
the same way on other material. Fool and blind, he 
has overlooked the primary value of a work of art, 
the power to give him a pleasure determined by the 
special sense to which it appeals. 

That each art gives its peculiar pleasure, condi- 
tioned by the sense to which it appeals, is self-evident 
to anybody who takes the trouble to analyze his sen- 
sations. We speak of “harmonies” of color, “ pictu- 
resque” sculpture and music, showing, in our very 
borrowing of adjectives, that we make a distinction in 
our sensations. A scrupulosity in marking this dis- 
tinction is the first step toward enlarging our individual 
field of zsthetic pleasure, and as our concern here is 
with our enjoyment of sculpture, we must analyze 
the sensations given by objects of three dimensions 
through the sense of sight. 

Now such an analysis in its scientifically exact form 
is to be found in the psychologic text-books, where 
it is too often so elaborated that it requires a special 
education to understand its terminology. It con- 
vinces our reason that our recognition of form by 
sight is based upon our sense of touch, that from 
our ancestors and our own infancy we have inherited 


the power of instantaneously identifying sight symbols 


6 INTRODUCTION 


with the results of touch experience, so that at bottom 
our sensations of form are sensations of touch, and it 
has traced for us the processes by which we gained 
this power back through the mazes of our own 
infancy and that of the race. For a personal realiza- 
tion of the truth of this theory and of the nature of 
those far-away processes, a little actual modelling is 
more enlightening than a study of treatises. Suppose 
one is modelling some small object in clay from a 
plaster cast. The sensations of depression and pro- 
jection which his hand gets as he moulds the clay con- 
tinually change as he endeavors to reach a combination 
of planes which will reflect the light in the same way 
that his cast does, that is, which will give the same 
signals to his eye. He begins to understand then, as 
he pushes the clay up for a high light and makes 
hollows for shadows, that gradations of light mean 
gradations of plane, mean sensations of touch of the 
hand. As for the more involved sensations of body, 
which the psychologist includes in the sensation of 
touch, the process by which they are translated into 
terms of sight is analogous to the sculptor’s experi- 
ence in modelling a figure. As he works, he feels, 
beside the sensations of objective touch, the bodily 
sensations appropriate to the state and action of the 
object he is making. He tests the relations of parts 


by his own sensations, by translating strain, relaxation, 


Sore SP NJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE 7 


pressure, etc., into sight terms. The sculptor’s expe- 
rience may hint to us of the way in which in our 
mysterious psychic past we learned to recognize form 
by sight. In the present the sight symbols are first 
in our consciousness, and their connection with touch 
sensations 1s apparent to us only in this fact, that 
they seem to produce in consciousness imagined sen- 
sations which are copies of the originals. Such im- 
agined sensations, it goes without saying, vary in 
intensity according to temperament and _ training. 
When the sculptor looks at an object, the light and 
shade which meet his eye speak to his hand, which 
_ feels in fancy the very sensations of modelling. When 
he looks at a figure, he tests by the irnagined sensa- 
tions of his body the symbols of strain, relaxation, 
etc. Now the imagined touch sensations, which, for 
the sculptor, follow so definitely upon sight, are in 
kind the same that the rest of the world feels in a 
fumbling, confused way, and which, according to their 
character, determine our zsthetic pleasure in form. 
For if, as an object of three dimensions, the piece 
of sculpture rouses in us imagined sensations, as an 
art object its function is to make those sensations the 
pleasantest possible, to give them a more enjoyable 
quality than could the natural object which it repre- 
sents. How is this brought about? We know that 
we take pleasure in the recognition of objects, and 


8 INTRODUCTION 


that there are certain qualities of form which give us 
pleasure. Now in a statue the sculptor aims to disen- 
tangle the important elements from the superfluous so 
that our recognition is quicker, and therefore pleasanter, 
than it is in the case of a natural object. Moreover, he 
presents to us in his synthesis, not only a synthesis of the 
significant elements, but a synthesis of those elements 
which are of the most beauty. For instance, compare 
the difference in the pleasant effect of a photograph 
and a portrait. If the artist’s synthesis is a good one, 
we shall notice that our recognition of the person is 
quicker and more pleasant in the case of the portrait 
than in that of the photograph, because the artist’s 
mind has selected, whereas the lens has caught every 
detail without emphasis of the important, or the most 
attractive. Moreover, in being able to select the 
elements of his synthesis, the artist is able to give us 
sensations experienced under ideal conditions, sensa- 
tions which are not accompanied by the fatigue of 
bodily waste, and which are of larger scope than we 
could of ourselves imagine. Should I ever be able to 
feel for myself in reality the muscular sensations which 
become mine in imagination when I identify myself 
with the Discobolus? I enjoy the pleasure of per- 
fect human action without any of the physical waste. 
If I look at the Shaw Monument, I can-extract the 


pleasure of rhythmic, concerted movement without 


Sere ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE 9 


feeling any of the discomfort attendant upon actual 
marching. I may even exceed the normal experience 
of the body, and possess, as I look at the Fates of the 
Parthenon, the imagined physical potentialities of the 
gods. 

Besides creating ideal conditions, the artist’s syn- 
thesis is in addition more pleasurable to us than is 
the natural object, because it is permanent, and conse- 
quently we can both accumulate imagined sensations 
through contemplation, and can examine them as our 
mood suggests. In an analytical examination, it is 
clear enough that such sensations are the true pro- 
genitors of emotions and ideas which we consider 
properly esthetic, since they are shaped and tinged 
from their source. Their stir in the mind is _ practi- 
cally coincident with that of the imagined sensations 
which determine their character and extent. Recog- 
nition of an object seems to start many mental vibra- 
tions, but, as such recognition is inextricably dependent 
upon the actual touch sensations which have preceded 
it, and the imagined ones which follow, it is really 
those sensations which set agog all that psychic region 
of ideas and emotions which can be properly termed 
esthetic, in distinction from those aroused by other 
stimuli. While, in theory, such directly esthetic ideas 
and emotions can be separated from those induced by 


non-sense stimuli, in practice, the law of association of 


IO INTRODUCTION 


ideas operates to make their isolation extremely diff- 
cult, and doubtless affects their quality. Sometimes by 
continuing them in pleasant channels, it prolongs their 
life, and gives us an extension of esthetic pleasure. 
For instance, the directly zsthetic feelings aroused by 
a medallion of a mother and child are the fruit of 
our recognition of the differences in imagined sensa- 
tion given by the two figures and of the relations 
between them. But we are accustomed to associate 
with that relation a network of feelings which con- 
tinue the directly zsthetic feelings, and make a pleas- 
ant irradiation of emotion. Sometimes, by checking 
the directly aesthetic feeling by some irrelevancy, the 
association of ideas causes the intrusion of pain. 
There is in Rome a colossal statue of the infant Her- 
cules. The sense impression of colossal proportions 
becomes painful when confronted with our associations 
of the tender helplessness of childhood. Often the 
ideas associated with material are at variance with the 
ideas of its form. The white marble sunbonnets, lace 
collars, and netted jerseys in which the modern Italian 
workman dresses his statues are disagreeably at vari- 
ance with the ideas of texture, flexibility, etc., which 
we associate with sunbonnets and collars and jerseys. 

Most indirect of all associations, and most often the 
farthest removed from our sensations, are the ideas 


and emotions aroused by the expression of a subject 


Sree ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE a 


in words. The real subject is our recognition based 
upon our sensations. The real subject sometimes 
coincides perfectly with the expressed subject, some- 
times coincides partly, sometimes coincides not at all. 
The degree of its coincidence affects the flow of our 
esthetic ideas and emotions, and therefore indirectly 
affects our zesthetic pleasure. In perfect art, words 
are unnecessary, or merely afford the intellectual satis- 
faction of expressing one’s thoughts in words. Whether 
the Theseus of the Parthenon be called Theseus or 
Mt. Olympus it has the same esthetic meaning to 
me, for my sensations are so adequately evocative 
of ideas and emotions that definition by words adds 
practically nothing. In Rodin’s War, the naming of 
the figure merely brings to the focus of a spoken 
word those ideas and emotions that my sensations 
have already induced. In less perfect art, the spoken 
subject counts for more. It adds or detracts. Both 
possibilities are illustrated by the Prudence of Paul 
III’s tomb in St. Peter's. Under the figure of the 
Pope reclines the half draped figure of a woman 
whose attitude and bodily form are replete with vo- 
luptuous suggestion. As an allegorical embodiment of 
the virtue Prudence it is ugly to me because of the 
shock between the real subject as recognized by my 
sensations and the ideas associated with the expressed 
subject. When however I find that the figure is a 


12 INTRODUCTION 


portrait of the mistress of Pope Paul III the shock 
is removed, and the figure and the subject reénforce 
each other. 

Considering the relativity of the zsthetic field con- 
sequent upon varying individual sensibility and associ- 
ation of: ideas, it becomes but too clear that we cannot 
say with certainty where the esthetic enjoyment of 
any work of sculpture melts into that adumbration of 
emotions and ideas which may be only indirectly con- 
nected with our imagined touch sensations. For each 
temperament there will be a different standard of zs- 
thetic value. That it shall be really zsthetic is the 
main necessity. It will be such if we demand that 
the work of sculpture shall meet two conditions. It 
shall produce pleasant imagined sensations which are 
unlike those obtained from any other source, and 
they shall be evocative of emotions and ideas which 
are felt to be in accord with them and with one 
another. 

The three great periods of sculpture, the Greek of 
the fifth century, B.c., the medizval of the thirteenth, 
and the Renaissance of the fifteenth have met the zs- 
thetic demand in different ways. It is because Greek 
sculpture meets most perfectly the two conditions stated 
that we call it the greatest sculpture. “That is the 
best art which best expresses the thing it can best 


express,” which gives the especial esthetic pleasure 


ONO THE ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE 13 


pertaining to it in purest form. How did the Greek 
meet the first requirement, that is, what means did 
he employ which can give the pleasantest possible 
sensations? In the first place he chose the human 
figure, preferably the nude, which is the object best 
able to give the most intense imagined sensations. 
He modelled it in broad planes, subtly flattened, so 
that the eye quickly and easily grasps the essentials. 
Under Greek conditions of physical life he had the 
nude figure constantly before his eyes in the gymnasia 
and the games. He therefore knew the appearance to 
the eye of every part of the symmetrically developed 
body in every posture of action. Such education of 
the eye has never been possible since in any other 
civilization. The modern sculptor knows his anatomy 
from dissection; the Greek probably knew only the 
iook of the muscles, etc., from the outside. The mod- 
ern sculptor, relying more upon his knowledge than 
upon the eye, builds up his figure on a wooden core 
by laying muscle on muscle, tendon on _ tendon. 
Strangely enough he gains by this exact method no 
greater appearance of reality, and the eye is tired by 
the details thrust upon it, details which it would never 
see for itself, but which the sculptor represents because 
he knows from his anatomy that they are there. Not 
only is the synthesis of the Greek a composition of 


the elements most significant in recognition, but it is 


14 INTRODUCTION 


as well a composition of elements which we call most 
beautiful because experience has shown us that they 
are most pleasant. The union of the most significant 
and the most pleasant sensations gives us the rarest, 
the most complete and most delightful of imagined 
sensations, namely, that of perfect physical self-posses- 
sion. Actual life furnishes only broken hints of such 
a sensation, just enough to make the imagination leap 
to meet the ideal of Greek sculpture, which as sculp- 
ture not only induces the imagined sensation of perfect 
human self-possession of body, but, by representing the 
gods’ as magnified humanity, raises that sensation to 
divine power, and makes real to us the apotheosis of 
all physical potentialities. 

The accompanying ideas and emotions seem _in- 
cluded in a corresponding mental _ self-possession, 
which is not that obtained by the mastery of one 
part of the nature by another, that conquest of flesh 
by spirit suggested by the Christian art, but is a state 
simultaneous with the physical, and in perfect accord. 
So well known to us are those maxims of the Greeks 
which express their racial thought, that we are glib 
enough in translating our ideas into such words 


Were 


as “definiteness,” “repose, serenity,’ “ideality,” etc. 
Had we never heard, however, of the “characteristics 
of the Greek Spirit,” Greek sculpture would still have 


been able to give us direct notions of an intellectual 


Sree ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE 15 


steadiness, a moral balance, and a spiritual serenity, 
illustrating perfect self-possession of body and _ soul, 
the “mens sana in corpore sano.” 

As a word from time to time changes its value in 
the vocabulary of a people, so an art from one age 
to another changes its value as a means of expres- 
sion. Sculpture was for the Greeks the art-word 
expressing their deepest views about life. For the 
Middle Ages the expressive word was architecture, 
and sculpture became the explanatory adjective. 
Therefore, the monumental sculpture of the Middle 
Ages is best considered in relation to the architec- 
ture which determined its character. 

In looking at the cathedral statues, the eye repeats 
in miniature the motions that it makes in going over 
the architecture. Our sensations, then, are practically 
those which architecture rather than sculpture gives, 
that is, the sensations of adjusted weight and of press- 
ure and of the balance of related masses, a set of feel- 
ings pleasant but less invigorating than those produced 
by detached figures whose proportions are human. So 
far, then, as our ideas and emotions follow directly on 
imagined sensations, they will be those connected 
with the qualities of dignity, strength, saintly simplic- 
ity and power, as contrasted with demonic distortion. 
But in this sculpture medizval Christianity meant to 


embody its complex theology and its mystic senti- 


16 INTRODUCTION 


ments. Such an aim was doomed to defeat. The 
stones could never be other than crude symbols of 
spiritual things, symbols which had perhaps to the 
medizeval peoples wide associations, theological and 
mystical, but which, to the ordinary observer of to- 
day, are merely symbols of a state of mind of past 
ages. When this great cathedral sculpture chooses, 
in its more plastic moments, the bodying forth of 
determinate conceptions in the illustration of Scrip- 
ture incident and character, its aesthetic appeal is 
direct and strong within limitations. It has to be 
said, however, that, taken as a whole, the interest of 
this sculpture is greater than its esthetic appeal, the 
working out of its meaning and moral more engross- 
ing than its sense appeal. Its value as esthetic fact 
is for most people swallowed up by its value as _his- 
toric fact, for its field of association is so wide and 
so interesting that one naturally becomes symbolist 
or scientist, and leaves sensation far behind. 

The early Renaissance inherited religious feeling 
from the Middle Ages, and since: sculpture of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is destined for 
‘church and shrine, its formal subjects are religious, 
but, unlike those of the preceding centuries, they are 
not theological. The classic revival and the awaken- 
ing. to nature leads it to throw off the incubus of 


dogma and of gloomy intricacy of feeling, and to 


ON THE ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE hg 


choose the more definite aspects and clearer senti- 
ments which are capable of representation in art. 
As in Italian architecture, the Gothic, true growth of 
the North, had never been other than a graft upon 
the classic tradition, rooted and grounded in the 
soil, so the subtleties and dark extremities of medi- 
eval faith had never fully possessed a people whose 
senses awoke at the first breath of the classic revival. 

Their formal subjects, then, are those incidents and 
sentiments of Bible story which form, as it were, the 
lyric matter of Christian poetry, and which, therefore, 
are in accord with and radiate from their direct sub- 
jects, which are the poetic threads of the fabric of 
thought, since they concern the innocence of child- 
hood, the chastity of delicate womanhood, the spirit of 
youth, the dignity of maturity, and the repose of death. 
Unable to grasp a whole design wherein each thread 
has its proportionate part, they seize now this thread, 
now that, and work it in with common stuff. For 
their newly awakened senses were incapable of seeing 
form steadily and seeing it whole, but were intoxicated 
by this or that fragment of beauty. Their sculpture, 
then, cannot give us an imagined sensation, like that 
of the Greek, of a perfect physical self-possession which 
includes all special sensations, but our imagined 
sensations are localized and specialized, made ecstatic 


by emphasis and contrast with the common, so that 


Cc 


18 INTRODUCTION 


there is more variation of physical mood possible than 
in Greek sculpture. It differs most from the Greek 
by inducing a set of imagined touch sensations rarely 
reported by healthy nerves. These are sensations 
largely dependent upon the working of the material. 
Let one who is familiar with originals of both Renais- 
sance and of Greek art compare their respective casts 
in a museum. He will realize this, that although the 
Greek cast echoes but feebly the sensations given by 
the original, yet that echo comes nearer to duplicat- 
ing the sensations that the original gave, than the 
Renaissance cast can come to duplicating the sensa- 
tions that its original gave. The reason is this: that 
in the Greek, the form, aside from the material and the 
workmanship of the marble, is the essential to which 
all else is subordinated; in the Renaissance a good 
half of our enjoyment depends upon the material, 
upon its surface treatment, its color, its polish. So 
great has been the sculptor’s longing for beauty that, 
although in the cramped physical life of the Middle 
Ages his eyes have never beheld nor his heart con- 
ceived the perfect forms of Greek life, and he has but 
caught fragments of beauty, a forehead, or a mouth, 
or a hand, and has set them inadequately, yet, out of 
his longing for beauty, he has lavished toil upon the 
details, working the marble as if it were wax, aiming 


at a subtle play of light and shade over its surface, 


ON THE ENJOYMENT OF SCULPTURE 19 


and has invented a new melody of sight to entrance 
the eye. And so strongly is his own desire of 
beauty thereby reflected to us, that we too ache for 
beauty. Certain delicate sensations of touch which it 
suggests, as the passing of the finger-tips over subtly 
modelled surfaces, the fall of eyelids on the cheek, and 
others as inexpressible in words, give pleasure as 
poignant as that which comes with the sudden per- 
fumes wafted over Tuscan hedges in spring, and attends 
the lingering afterglow of clear yellow sunsets hung 


behind the purple curves of Tuscan hills. 


TAR Goel 


PeerakLY KENATSSANCE 


CHAPTER I 


freee eam LE RISTICS OF THE EARLY 
RENAISSANCE 


” 


pAb LE Re] 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 


(1400-1500) 


So subtle is the zsthetic appeal of Renaissance 
sculpture, so varied and delicate are the imagined 
sensations induced, and so gently do the emotions 
and ideas which they arouse melt into the atmos- 
phere of poetry which the word “ Renaissance” car- 
ries with it, that it is a difficult matter to isolate 
the purely zsthetic element of the general poetic 
appeal. To think and to feel without words is direct 
esthetic enjoyment. When, however, we attempt to 
define our enjoyment in words, we think that we 
realize better our attitude toward the art object if 
we understand how that object came to be “as in 
itself it really is.” In other words, if we can logi- 
cally see how the general characteristics of any 
historical period show themselves as formative influ- 
ences in the art of that period, we add to our field 
of association many ideas which seem to cast light 


on our esthetic enjoyment. 
23 


24 ITALIAN, SCULPIURE 


Behind all the visible manifestations of the human 
spirit during the Renaissance was the unexplainable 
awakening of spiritual energy. Of the observable 
causes accelerating onward movement, the enthusiasm 
for Antiquity and the enthusiasm for Nature are the 
most clearly marked. 

In art these are the discovered headwaters, the two 
tributary sources, which, under general Renaissance 
influences, send down the dry bed of medizeval art a 
spring flood whose great wave changes the face of 
the country through which it passes, and which, despite 
diminishing force, rolls in turn through every nation 
of Western Europe. How did these two tributaries 
show themselves in the general current? Let us con- 
sider first the enthusiasm for Antiquity, an influence 
so prominent in all Renaissance activity that to early 
historians it suggested the figurative name of “ re-birth.” 
In the Early Renaissance, the influence of Antiquity 
upon art was indirect; that is, it resulted in inspiration 
rather than in imitation. It was communicated through 
the Latin classics. The painter or sculptor or jeweller 
may have owned and read for himself his Cicero or his 
Lucretius or his translation of Plato. But, even if his 
contact with the classics were not at first hand through 
his own study, he was in the way of frequently hearing 
the Latin worthies read and commented upon by the 
scholars who owned the same patron as himself. He 


CHARACTERISTICS 25 


was one of the company who sat at table with his 
princely patron, and, while his eyes wandered over 
the rich colors of vaulted ceiling and frescoed walls, or 
perhaps fastened upon some fragment of antique marble 
recently acquired and proudly displayed, his ears were 
hearing dissertations on the lives and ideals of the 
ancient Romans by the most noted humanists of the day. 
Or in Lorenzo’s villa at Fiesole he listens to the 
discussion, of Aristotle’s idea of beauty, while his eyes 
drink in the clear distance-color of Tuscan landscape, 
and the lovely curves and modelling of Tuscan hills. 
Therefore, when he draws his subject from classic story, 
as did Botticelli in his Birth of Venus, he conceives 
it in a romantic spirit as far removed from the classic, 
as is the physically complacent Venus de’ Medici from 
that pale wistful goddess of Botticelli, who resembles 
her prototype only in name and an echo of pose. Per- 
haps he had studied Antiquity in Rome itself with the 
ardor of Brunelleschi or of the young Donatello. After- 
ward he draws upon his sketch-book for classic motifs 
of decoration, but he works those motifs into his own 
original ornamental schemes, untrammelled by classic 
treatment and tradition. Even when he is most strenu- 
ously endeavoring to work in the classic manner, as 1s 
plainly the case with Donatello in his David of the 
Bargello, he has not made a _ conglomeration — of 


bodily forms from fragments of the antique that have 


26 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


come to his notice, but, stopping far short of imitation, 
he has tried to imbue the statue with certain classic 
qualities, as he understood them, and has secured the 
life of his statue by working from a living model. 

Perhaps, like Ghiberti, he was an enthusiastic collec- 
tor of antique marbles, with so keen an appreciation 
of their beauties as to say that “the touch only can 
discover its beauties which escape the sense of sight 
in any light.” But unmistakable as is the classic 
influence in the grace and suavity of Ghiberti’s Bap- 
tistery gates, there is no direct imitation there. The 
copper of the bronze is not more inseparably fused 
with the other elements of the compound than is the 
classic with the Gothic and the individual, to make 
the unique beauty of the wonderful doors. 

Ghiberti’s willingness to spend over a score of years 
in combining various elements of beauty illustrates the 
truest and deepest influence of the Antique upon the 
sculptors of the Early Renaissance. They were not yet 
learned enough to reduce classic art to a set of for- 
mulze, nor did they comprehend its conventions, its ideals, 
or its spirit. But their brooding enthusiasm for its 
imagined beauties kindles a passion for beauty, for all 
beauty, which burns out of their work the stupidities 
of tradition and the grossness of insensibility. The 
reflex of this spirit upon us makes much of the charm 


of the minor sculptors. Lacking the intensity of such 


Soa wAGLERISTICS a7, 


genius as Ghiberti’s, which could strike out into defi- 
nite forms its visions of loveliness, the minor masters 
are yet agitated by that desire of beauty which per- 
vades the artistic atmosphere. Not a bit of sculptured 
ornament, nor a relief, not a bust but shows in its 
careful planning, its conscientious cutting, and its pains- 
taking finish, its maker’s longing to make the work of 
his hands a thing of beauty. It is, moreover, this keen 
desire of beauty which discovered and made possible 
in sculpture certain rare and delicate appeals, as the 
exquisite structure of the hands, and of the emaciated 
faces of old men, the curves of girlish foreheads, and 
the folds of women’s eyelids. 

Such being the deepest influence of the enthusiasm 
for Antiquity, it is to it rather than to the enthusiasm 
for Nature that the zsthetic character of Early Renais- 
sance sculpture is due. The latter influence is the 
greatest evolutionary force, and determines the progres- 
sion of the art. The sculptors labor steadily, even 
joyfully, upon those problems which concern the rep- 
resentation of visual facts, problems of anatomy, of 
human proportions, and of the technique of material, 
and their success in solving them accounts not only 
for the steady evolution of sculpture as compared with 
the more fluctuating course of painting, but also deter- 
mines the short life of sculpture, which, like some 


natural organism developing under the most favorable 


28 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


conditions, was thus enabled to proceed with no hin- 
drances through the processes of growth, culmination, 
and decay. So orderly is its movement and so natural 
is its rise and fall, that we divide the semicircle of its 
course into two arcs called the “ Early” and the “ Late” 
Renaissance, which are distinguished from each other 
in spirit, subject, and technique. 

Most apt is the application of the adjective “ youth- 
ful” to the spirit of the Early Renaissance in all of its 
phases and manifestations. As regards sculpture, in 
freshness of feeling, in naive representation of what 
attracts it, in satisfaction with the beauty that strikes 
the sense, void of any evidences of struggle to express 
a deep spiritual significance, its spirit is truly youthful. 
Its high estimate of its own productions, even while it 
vaunted those of Antiquity, implies a confidence in its 
own taste and a disposition to be a law unto itself, 
which, while it is also youthful, is yet the natural safe- 
guard of the artist spirit in any period. Its two 
crowning qualities, however, are those which, alas, are 
too rarely the endowment either of the artist or of 
youth, namely, its intellectuality and its emotional sensi- 
bility. It had the willingness to think; it had the 
capacity for sentiment. It was intellectual and it was 
also poetic. Has the possession and exercise of brain 
ever been more strikingly shown in art than in those 


two splendid equestrian statues, the Gattamelata and 


CHARACTERISTICS 29 


the Colleoni which, in composition, grasp of character, 
and mastery of material, have hardly been equalled in 
modern times, and have surely never been surpassed? 
Or could certain sentiments be more poetically ex- 
pressed ? — that feeling for the dead, for instance, which 
is the theme of Renaissance tombs? Could any elegy 
better voice the Christian’s thought of the dead, as of 
those who rest from this life and await that which is 
to come, than that figure of the young Cardinal of 
Portugal lying on his tomb in San Miniato, the frailty 
of the physical pathetically suggested by the wasted 
face and hands, the surety of the spiritual by the essen- | 
tial dignity of the lifeless body that was once its tene- 
ment? 

This poetic spirit finds itself in happy harmony with 
the subjects that sculpture was called upon to treat. 
Art is still the handmaid of religion; but as if both 
are conscious that separation is near at hand, they 
accommodate their positions to each other, the one 
_ satisfied with such Ariel service as the other is eager 
to give. Sculpture is not compelled, as in earlier times, 
to the hopeless task of embodying in stone the mys- 
teries and terrors of the Last Judgment, nor, mutiny- 
ing against religion, as in later days, does it pretend 
to serve, calling by the names of saints and virtues, 
- statues, which in voluptuous appeal minister to the 


flesh, not to the spirit. -It is at one with the church 


30 TTALIAN SCULPIURE 


in the possession of a kind of religious sentiment 
which its genius is admirably fitted to express. By 
preference the sculptor pays his devotions to the Ma- 
donna and to some few favorite patron saints. He 
establishes them in their shrines with all due rever- 
ence, but, led by his naturalistic instinct to give them 
the forms and features which charm his eye in the 
actual world that he knows, he thereby seems to bring 
them within the palpable reach of human affection, 
into a relation of friendly neighborliness. In its reliefs 
sculpture treats again and again simple incidents in 
scriptural narrative and in the lives of the saints, feel- 
ing no apparent weariness in telling over and over 
stories which it still wholly loves, and doubtless more 
than half believes. Its free statues are those of saints 
or prophets, holy characters, but actual men notwith- 
standing; Zachariah, with bald head, beloved St. Ber- 
nard, toothless, but with kindly eyes. 

In its secular subjects, its intellectuality finds larger 
scope in its portraits, which, few in number as com- 
pared with collections of ancient and modern busts, 
are yet the masterpieces of the world. The Egyptian 
attained actual imitation of human features; the Ro- 
man succeeded in representing the man, but the Re- 
naissance did more than either, for it comprehended 
and expressed the character, and yet made the outer 


presentment of the man an object beautiful in itself. 


CHARACTERISTICS 31 


This habit of prizing the zsthetic possibilities of the 
portrait appears fully developed in the tombs, where 
the effigy of the man is framed, as it were, in an elab- 
orate composition of decorative surfaces, of which the 
face and hands form the keynote of color, the domi- 
nant value in the scale of light and shade which com- 
pose the ordered and melodious whole. 

The examination of any one tomb of the Early 
Renaissance gives us an idea of the technique of all 
the marble workers. There they show themselves mas- 
ters of the harmonies of light and shade, and display 
their skill in combining every value of figure, relief, 
and texture in panels, mouldings, figures, and drapery. 
But the same technique is as evident in every piece 
of marble that left their hands, and is the trademark 
to distinguish any Renaissance work whatsoever from 
the marbles of other times. The technique of the Re- 
naissance sculptor is his own. The Greek sculptor could 
no doubt have played with his chisel any trick that 
seemed worth while. We are not able to judge with 
conviction of the surface of Greek marbles nor of Greek 
use of color. That later Greek art begins to care more 
for texture than did Phidian art seems plausible from 
the careful and soft treatment of surface in the Hermes 
of Praxiteles. The Renaissance sculptor cared over- 
whelmingly for surface effect, and enjoyed producing 
it, as all workmen like to do what they can do easily 


32 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


and satisfactorily. The reasons for his facility are not 
far to seek, and are two. He is the descendant of 
the stone carver, and the apprentice of the goldsmith. 
From the first, he inherits a dexterity of hand which 
renders marble like wax to his touch. In the shop of 
the second, his hand has been trained to habits of accu- 
racy and delicacy, and his eye to the love of graceful 
and inventive detail. His eye, however, has learned its 
power of discriminating niceties of light from painting. 
So much has he learned from that source that he 
seems often to look at his work with a painter's rather 
than with a sculptor’s eye, for, to obtain a variety of 
values approaching those at the command of the for- 
mer, he borrows from him linear perspective, and he 
plans the color of his stone, the lights of high to low 
relief, of polish and of texture, as does a painter the 
color scheme of his picture. 

It is this sort of “picturesqueness,” this quality de- 
pendent upon surface technique, which makes the 
unique sense charm of. Renaissance marbles and gives 
us a set of imagined sensations as delightful as rare. 
Delicate modelling, skilful handling of planes, subtle 
balance of textures, suggest through their many grada- 
tions of light and shade a sequence of refinements, of 
touch sensations referred to the palm and the finger-tips, 
which seem to belong to some sense inactive in our 


ordinary experience, since they give us an imagined 


CHARACTERISTICS 33 


sensibility of a degree of keenness that only the blind 
know. 

As in all good art, the sense pleasure is firmly 
bound in with the emotional pleasure to round out 
our esthetic enjoyment. To describe the latter is as 
difficult as to analyze the pleasant agitation produced 
in us by a bar of Schubert, a cadence in Wordsworth, 
or by “that green light that lingers in the west.” The 
charm of its types we partly understand. They have 
the particularly modern charm of incompleteness, of 
that deviation from the typical, that inequality of attri- 
butes which, in our eyes, constitute individuality and 
suggest personalities with which our spirits discover 
sympathies. 

Each of the minor sculptors has a way of recaptur- 
ing and repeating favorite types in which he finds an 
evident expressiveness, with the result that we not 
only feel as if admitted to a sort of intimacy with 
him, since he so frankly reveals his likings, be it in 
his favorite bend of neck, contour of cheek, curve of 
brow, but we make acquaintance with the vision that 
is his type, which we may henceforth admit to our 
fancies, or look for in our experience. In the work 
of all there are types possessed of all the outward and 
visible signs of spiritual distinction, suggesting high 
passions, quickened sensibility, the stuff of poetry and 


romance. 


D 


34 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


So much for the charm of this sculpture. What is 
its value as seen historically? 

Every period of an art practically contributes to the 
general progress and content of that art in two ways: 
first, by treating of new things, second, by treating old 
things in a new way. Now, in the limited field of 
sculpture, it is even less possible than in painting to 
treat of strictly speaking “new things.” No doubt 
severe logic would place even the so-called “ originals ” 
of the Renaissance in the category of old subjects; yet 
so distinctly new is the method of approach that the 
result is really a new thing, and an original. To 
speak more concretely —the portrait, the relief, and 
the tomb are the originals of this period, and are its - 
contributions to the content of sculpture. We know 
the beauty of the idealized Greek bust, we know the 
realistic Roman portrait, and we know that the Re- 
naissance portrait is a new art object, combining the 
qualities of both, perhaps, but making a new esthetic 
appeal. There were tombs of some architectural pre- 
tension in Gothic days; indeed, in the Italian churches 
they may be found side by side with Renaissance 
tombs on the same wall, but the latter, rich creations 
of an architect-decorator-sculptor, are hardly distant 
cousins of the former, and are new appearances in 
sepulchral art. 


The Egyptians employed the lowest relief, the 


CHARACTERISTICS 35 


Romans the highest. The Greeks used several planes, 
and even conventions of perspective with so exquisite 
a taste that one is allowed to think that their reliefs 
surpass in plastic beauty those of the Renaissance. 
But, nevertheless, the latter are an advance in the his- 
tory of sculpture, for they mean new sensations, and 
the further development of the capabilities of material. 

In its free statues, and in its equestrian statues, the 
Renaissance did not create new things. Its niched 
prophets are an advance in realism over the cathedral 
statues, and its two magnificent equestrian statues at 
Padua and at Venice outrank in life and power the 
Marcus Aurelius of Rome; but both illustrate a new, 
mildly new, method of treating old subjects, and give 
no originals to the history of sculpture. It is left for 
Michelangelo in the Late Renaissance to contribute 
further. 


PEA LAK LT 


mie ORIGINS: THE PISANI 


e 


ee Rall 
THE ORIGINS: THE PISANI 


To pass from the mention of the “originals” of a 
period to a discussion of its origins implies a mental 
journey from the complete to the incomplete, as it were 
a passing from the symphony to the notes of its 
‘simple theme, and means a constant diminishing of 
pleasure. It is more exhilarating to pass from the 
imperfect to the more perfect, from the origins to the 
originals, There are only fitful gleams of esthetic 
pleasure to be found in the beginnings of Italian 
sculpture. The intellect and the imagination fare bet- 
ter than the senses, yet the student will find, in study- 
ing the works of the Pisani, that his interest in them | 
as links in the evolution of the art 1s accompanied by 
a genuine if vague sense pleasure. For the progression 
toward a satisfactory imitation of the human figure 
corresponds to an agreeable imagined sensation of 
growth, which is heightened by the contrast of Pisan 
sculpture with the deteriorated Byzantine types and the 
rude native stone carving which preceded, and whose 
conventionalized distortions appear here and_ there 

39 


40 ITALIAN SCUGEURE 


in the new sculpture, side by side with living natural 
forms, like withered leaves in spring foliage. The 
sculpture of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, 
when regarded from the standard of architectural 
decoration, is interesting and effective. As sculpture, 
however, it can give few imagined sensations of touch 
that are agreeable. In fact, it is because we think of 
it as ornamental pattern woven of grotesques, that we 
do not feel the pain of its deformities. The figures 
seem to have been bound, according to the Chinese 
punitive method, into torturing, unnatural attitudes. 
The man who releases them, who first makes possible 
normal attitudes and natural movement for the 
cramped limbs, is Niccola Pisano, the first of the 
Pisani, who changes them from symbols into imita- 
tions. The state of the stone carvers of Niccola’s day 
is comparable to that of a child before his first draw- 
ing lesson. He draws his picture of a man after the 
traditional pattern of childhood, making a little circle 
for the head, an oblong for the body, and hooks for 
legs and arms; and this he finds a satisfactory symbol, 
for he has never thought of the actual look of a man. 
Now at his first drawing lesson he is given a cast of 
a man or an actual. object to draw from, and his art 
education has begun. There happened something like 
that in Tuscan sculpture. For Niccola of Pisa, already 


a famous architect, was dissatisfied with stone sym- 


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NICCOLA PISANO 
PULPIT 
Baptistery, Pisa 


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Par eORIGINS: THE {PISANI 41 


bols, and gave himself drawing lessons from the reliefs 
upon an old Roman sarcophagus which still stands in 
the Campo Santo of Pisa. He profited from his les- 
sons, and the sculpture of the Renaissance was born. 

The way of it was this. The city of Pisa had fin- 
ished its magnificent new Baptistery, and desiring a 
marble pulpit fittingly rmch for the same, gave the 
commission to Niccola, the architect. Now an origi- 
nal and skilful architect hike Niccola has no trouble 
with his main design. He plans his pulpit as a six- 
sided box, supported on six pillars of different colored 
marble. He connects the pillars by Romanesque 
arches which he fills with Gothic cusps. The sides 
of the box he plans to fill with panels in high relief 
representing scenes from Scripture. Since he is not 
a sculptor, it is for the sake of these reliefs that he 
takes his drawing lesson. From an old sarcophagus, 
on which is carved in Roman style the story of Hip- 
polytus and Phzedra, he copies attitudes, figures, heads, 
every fragment that he can work into his compositions 
for the Bible themes. In the Adoration of the Magi 
the seated Madonna is copied from the Roman matron 


who, on the sarcophagus, appears as Theseus’s wife. 


- The Samson who stands above the capital of a pillar 


at the left is copied from the Hippolytus of the sar- 
cophagus. Everywhere, in the heads of youths, in 


the draperies, in gestures, in the horses, are transposi- 


42 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


tions as skilful as his unpractised hand could make. 
Wherever he has had no model, as, for instance, in the 
two cramped figures crowded into the triangular 
spandrels on either side of the erect, vigorous Sam- 
son, the dependence of his untrained hand and eye 
upon a model is obvious. The impression made 
by this characteristic corner of Samson and _ the 
prophets is repeated in every other part of the carv- 
ing. There is the vivid difference in sensation be- 
tween human proportion and human distortion and 
the contrast in idea which it suggests, and there is 
all the interest of separating the copied parts from 
the other cruder parts, and of comparing the former 
with their prototypes on the Roman_ sarcophagus. 
And at a distance the panels are seen to be, in rela- 
tion to the pulpit as a whole, a rich decoration for a 
well-proportioned piece of church furniture, whose 
mellow color, rich material, and harmonious structure 
make it a delight to the eyes. 

It may be said, paraphrasing the words of an old 
writer, that the Renaissance sculptors issued from the 
Pisan pulpit as the Greeks from the Trojan horse, 
for there follow upon its completion commissions from 
the other Tuscan cities for works of the new sculp- 
ture; Niccola trains his son and his workmen to his 
enlarged view of form, and thus forms the so-called 
“Pisan School.” Of that school there are three 


NICCOLA PISANO 
DETAIL (SAMSON) OF PULPIT 


Baptistery, Pisa 


THE ORIGINS: THE PISANI 43 


master sculptors whose works mark steps of progres- 
sion, — Giovanni his son, Andrea da Pontedera, and 
Orcagna the Florentine. For many years Giovanni 
works with Niccola in the latter’s semi-classic man- 
ner, yet with some slight indication of his own strong 
individuality, which bursts forth finally after his 
father’s death in his independent works. His hand 
and eye have indeed been trained to a degree of 
freedom and of amplitude of form, yet the classic 
qualities which attracted Niccola are to him inade- 
quate means for the expression of a dramatic and 
passionate view of religion, more akin to medizval 
violence than to classic serenity. In feeling the beauty 
of the classic type of form, Niccola was far in advance 
of an age whose true affinity was with the Gothic, 
as the works of Giovanni and of the later Pisani 
imply in their susceptibility to the influence of the 
French Gothic. The classic had served Niccola for 
a model. When, in beginning to work, he had not 
been content to follow the crude manner of his pred- 
ecessors, he had used the antique as a means toward 
the satisfying of his idea of natural form. Huis son, 
Giovanni, passes on from the study of the model to 
the study of nature direct. But he learns nature's 
combinations slowly, and, filled as he is with the 
mystic and dramatic spirit of Gothic Christianity, his 


conceptions far outrun his skill of hand. Therefore, 


44 ITALIAN SCULFPIURE 


while in dramatic action and feeling he far outranks 
Niccola, in the beauty of figures and of detail he is 
less satisfactory. To compare the restored pulpit of 
Giovanni in the museum of Pisa with that of his 
father in the Baptistery is to feel at first glance a dif- 
ference in the spirit of the two. Giovanni's aggrega- 
tion of symbols and allegories is a find for the 
religious symbolist, and perhaps a bit of a nightmare 
for the non-strenuous pleasure seeker. The panels 
are, like Niccola’s, overcrowded with figures in high 
relief, which evidence more feeling for human move- 
ment, and perhaps less feeling for human form. As 
illustrations, that is, as illustrations adapted to Guo- 
vanni’s day, they are realistic and impressive. The 
figures of the supports are expressive individually and 
are remarkably full of life, but, collectively, they are 
somewhat irritating, because of their difference of scale 
and their function in the architectural structure. As 
allegory and symbol, they are to most of us as 
unmeaning as the local hits of a Latin play, but they 
were no doubt a forceful bodying forth of contem- 
porary ideas. In fact, not only in expressiveness, but 
in naturalness, Giovanni’s art was a revelation to his 
time, and its influence spread throughout all Italy. 
He pointed to Italian art its true path, the study of 
nature. Yet although many sculptors worked under 


him in all parts of Italy, they made no appreciable 


gentle nae Be t 


GIOVANNI PISANO 
PULPIT (REPRODUCTION) 


Museum, Pisa 


foie ORIGINS: THE PISANI 45 


advance, since they rather preferred to copy his designs 
than to seek to complete his view of natural objects. 
His true successor is Giotto. The torch which Gio- 
vanni, the architect-sculptor, had lighted is passed on 
to painting, and “Giotto is the greatest work of the 
Pisani.” | 

Giotto’s influence was felt in all branches of art, in 
architecture and sculpture as well as in painting. It 
is by his aid that Andrea, the third great Pisan, carries 
sculpture beyond Giovanni's stopping-place. His re- 
liefs on Giotto’s campanile, and on the bronze doors 
which he cast for the Florentine Baptistery, have all the 
clearness and sententiousness of Giotto’s frescos; they 
show a better observation of nature than Giovanni 
was capable of at his best, and there is a restraint and 
quietness about the figures which seems the blossoming 
of Niccola’s attempt to reproduce the antique propor- 
tions. For the first time in the progression of Italian 
sculpture, one feels that the human framework is put 
together in normal average proportions capable of ordi- 
nary controlled movement. Notice, for instance, in the 
panel chosen for illustration, The Beheading of John, 
that the two quietly posed figures of the guards are, 
by- virtue of their normal proportions and correct ar- 
ticulations, expressive of the latent possibility of any 
vigorous human movement. The weight and substance 


of their sturdy figures, their bearing down upon the 


46 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


ground, is well contrasted with the lifting-up sensation 
communicated by the poised figure of the executioner. 
The latter, in its preparedness for action, shows Andrea’s 
instinctive choice of the truly sculptural moment. Gen- 
uinely plastic in his use of few figures, fewer planes, 
and scarcely any accessories, his gates contrast. most 
interestingly with those on the opposite side of the 
Baptistery made as their pendant by Ghiberti. Both 
have for their theme the story of John the Baptist, but 
the first are to the second as, in the “ Ancient Mari- 
ner,” the quaint, succinct, prose outline is to the vivid, 
detailed poetry which it accompanies. Andrea's clear- 
ness of silhouette and of narrative is pleasant to eye 
and mind alike, and many of his heads and figures 
have the charm of felicitous phrases in a well-told 
story. 

Andrea’s doors are incised and gilded by goldsmiths 
whose craft is the starting-point for both sculptors and 
painters. It is in the goldsmith’s shop that Orcagna, 
the last of the Pisan school, receives a training which 
colors all of his artistic output, be it painting, sculp- 
ture, architecture, or poetry. To remember that fact 
is to explain to oneself the impression made by the 
only authentic piece of his sculpture that we possess, 
that is, the tabernacle which he made to  enshrine 
the miraculous picture of the Virgin of Orsanmichele. 


The tabernacle is a Gothic structure of finely grained, 


Seen eee 


ANDREA PISANO 
PANEL. THE BEHEADING OF JOHN 


Baptistery Gates, Florence 


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Mie ORIGINS: THE sPISANI 47 


mellow-tinted marble, and every inch of it is enriched 
with carved ornament, mosaics, and sculpture, so that 
it seems planned as an enlarged jewel casket. In the 
upper part statuettes and busts are used with rich 
ornamental effect. The lower part is surrounded by 
a band of panels in relief, whose subjects are incidents 
in the life of the Virgin, and which are separated from 
each other by charming statuettes of the Virtues. Time 
has given to the marble the look of ivory-colored wax, 
and the impression of delicate softness of structure is 
increased by the refinement and loveliness of the figures. 
The chief characteristic of the figures, indeed, is a re- 
finement which results from the elimination of violent 
action, and from the use of drapery, and which, while 
it affords no positive stimulus, means a tranquil satis- 
faction born of the absence of positive distortion. The 
details of the drapery and of the figures are pleasing, 
and the bounding lines are often so graceful that one 
longs to follow them with the finger as well as with 
the eye. They teli the story of Mary with a simple 
reverence and sweetness that become traditional in 
the treatment of the subject in Florentine art. In the 
Sposalizio, for instance, there is in the relations of the 
three figures, a tender girlishness in the half-shrinking 
Mary, a beneficence in the officiating priest, and a 
guilelessness in the Joseph for which even Perugino 


and Raphael, commanding the resources of painting 


48 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


can, in later days, find no substitute. When one is 
not in the mood to enjoy detail, and to appreciate in 
turn, carving, mosaic, statuette, construction, this aggre- 
gation of small perfections loses half its charm, and 
seems a less noble work than the great arches of the 
vaulted roof above, in which, says tradition, Orcagna 
the architect had large share. And yet there remains 
in the mind so deep an impression of the richness 
and loveliness of the tabernacle that, as we construct 
it in memory out of its many exquisite components, it 
makes for Orcagna as strong a claim to fame as do 
his frescos at Santa Maria Novella or his Loggia del 
Bigallo. 

The progress of the Pisan school in representation 
of form may be briefly summarized as_ follows: 
Niccola rejects the lifeless, formal symbols of medizeval 
carvers, and adapts to his uses a form that is an 
imitation, as far as it goes, of natural proportions, 
and which, therefore, bears with it ideas of its own. 
Giovanni does not confine his work to the scale of 
proportion which was Niccola’s model, but passes on 
to the observation of nature, and to the representa- 
tion, as it were, of new facts of form. These facts 
he is not always able to bind together into co- 
herent relations, although in accuracy and extent 
they form a remarkable collection. Andrea learns, 


perhaps from Giotto, to separate the significant facts 


ORCAGNA 
SPOSALIZIO. DETAIL OF TABERNACLE 


Orsanmichele, Florence 


7 


Bone OniGINS: THE PISANI 49 


from the insignificant, and to so relate them that his 
figures are orderly, clear syntheses of the important 
elements of form. Orcagna has not Andrea’s power 
of noting the significant, but he groups many graceful 
facts heretofore unnoticed, and, hinting at the Floren- 
tine mood which enjoyed detail in all the arts, he 
foreshadows Ghiberti, in whose work that mood found 


its most complete expression. 


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JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA 


(1371-1438) 


ALTHOUGH to make direct connection between the 
tentative appearance of certain tendencies in the last 
of the Pisan school and their establishment as domi- 
nant qualities in the first of the Florentines, one has 
but to walk from Orsanmichele to the Baptistery, yet, 
chronologically, there exists between Orcagna and Ghi- 
berti a sculptor who was the genius of the Sienese 
school, and whose works are too important to be over- 
looked. Therefore we make the journey from Orsan- 
michele to the Baptistery by way of Siena, and the 
actual geographical detour is paralleled by the break 
in continuity of mood. Orcagna heralds Ghiberti as 
streaks of light in the east announce the rising sun. 
Jacopo della Quercia interrupts natural progress like 
lightning at sunrise. For, although being older than 
Ghiberti, he marks, in a way, the transition from the 
Pisan to the Florentine manner, yet so pronounced is 
his individuality that, despite many Gothic mannerisms 

Li a 


54 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


which connect him with his predecessors, his concep- 
tion of form is so personal that he seems to stand 
outside of any school, and in boldness of vision and 
in vigor of thought he is nearer to Michelangelo than 
he is to his Florentine contemporaries. 

So striking was the effect of his style in his first 
masterpiece, the Fontegaja of Siena, that he was 
straightway called Jacopo of the Fountain. Of that 
famous fountain there remain only a few fragments 
which are huddled together in the cathedral museum. 
The modern reproduction of the fountain, which occu- 
pies in the piazza the site of the original, is interesting 
as giving an idea of a design which was unique and 
effective. It consists of a three-sided parapet surround- 
ing the pool and affording space on its long side for 
niched statues of the Seven Virtues and a Madonna 
and Child, while the two shorter ends are filled by 
two reliefs, the Creation of Adam, and the Expulsion 
from Paradise. The modern copy is still white and 
new, and the figures have a sort of smug completeness 
which stands much in need of the ravages of time to 
soften into beauty. The fragments of the museum 
are more interesting, broken and rusted as they are. 
Their relationship to the medizeval type of the Virtues 
is evident in their heavy outlines and twisted draper- 
ies, but there ends their kinship to the meagre, ascetic 


type of Gothic woman. For these large-framed fig- 


DELLA QUERCIA 
THE EXPULSION. PANEL IN GESSO 
Cathedral Library, Siena 


JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA 5s 


ures have bodies under their draperies, and the mus- 
cular necks, ample bosoms, and vigorous limbs had 
clearly more meaning for Della Quercia than had 
the faces. A model in stucco for The Expulsion may 
be seen in the cathedral library, where, in proximity 
to Pinturicchio’s dandies clad all in purple and fine 
linen, its powerful nudity has the effect of a thunder- 
clap breaking in on the shrill pipings of frogs. 

Such a powerful conception of the human figure is 
the most direct vision of muscular action as idea that 
we find in sculpture before Michelangelo. That it 
exerted an influence upon Michelangelo through the 
reliefs of the great portal of San Petronio at Bologna 
is more than probable. Time has dealt so hardly with 
the great door, and so blackened and eaten the stone, 
that the action of the figures is best studied from pho- 
tographs and casts. In actuality, their indistinctness 
adds, no doubt, to their suggestiveness. Looking up 
from the broad steps of approach, the huge doorway 
seems to be framed in blurred shadows, from which 
are emerging the nude, muscular figures of men and 
women, which appear, even in these small panels, to 
be of heroic proportions. Considering their few inches 
of height, and the shallowness of the relief, they pro- 
duce imagined sensations of remarkable intensity, as 
far removed from the ordinary as is the primeval from 


the civilized. For their emphasized muscularity sug- 


56 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


gests strange capabilities of such movement as is born 
of primitive passions. Man's first existent state of 
harmony with himself and with his Maker is directly 
and strongly expressed by the powerful, free-moving 
figure of the newly created Adam who speaks face to 
face with his Creator, and by the perfect Eve who 
“lightly draws her breath and feels her life in every 
limb.” What a tragedy is there in the contrasting fig- 
ures of the fallen Adam who bends over his spade in 
sullen fury, and the Eve who, hampered by drapery, 
holding a distaff, and bound to the two infants at her 
feet, is caught in the toils of experience! Blurred as 
are the figures of Adam and Eve in the Expulsion, 
they yet give us the sense of looking backward through 
the ages at the primeval human outlined against the 
clouds of God’s wrath, and they tell the tragedy of 
man’s fall with a force equalled only by Milton, by 
Masaccio, and by Michelangelo. 

Such power to express movement —a power so rare 
in Tuscan sculpture that we must wait until Michelan- 
gelo appears for its rebirth—Jis not often compatible 
with an ability to express perfect repose. And yet 
there is an early work of Della Quercia, the tomb of 
Ilaria del Carretto at Lucca, which is a famous exam- 
ple of the quality of “ Repose.” What remains of the 
original monument is placed in a transept of the cathe- 


dral of Lucca, and consists of the sepulchral effigy of 


DELLA QUERCIA 


LEFT OF PORTAL 


S. Petronio, Bologna 


ier oO DER ELCA OUERCIA Ly 


the Lady Ilaria, a figure outstretched upon a low, rec- 
tangular base which is encircled by a frieze of garland- 
bearing cupids, vanguard of the cherubic host of 
Renaissance art. The figure is one of the most beau- 
tiful in all sepulchral art. The head is supported by 
pillows, the shoulders rest firmly on the slab, the arms 
lie quietly at full length with folded hands, the drapery, 
settled into long, still folds, covers the quiet limbs. 
There is no detail, from fallen eyelids to motionless 
feet, that does not contribute to the impression of a 
perfect repose which is neither the rigidity of death 
nor the relaxation of sleep, but perfect sculptural arrest. 
A round headdress, bound with sprays of convention- 
alized roses, makes with the plaited hair a frame for a 
face whose contours of brow, and cheek, and chin are 
most lovely, and which lifts itself above the curved 
collar covering the long throat as might a_ flower 
from its sheathing calyx. The repose of the figure, 
the simplicity of the drapery, the sweet delicacy 
of the features, fill one’s sense with much _ tranquil 
pleasure, and suggest a possible and poetic type of 
woman. Is it a faithful portrait? Did so sweet a 
creature ever mate with the tyrannous and_ hated | 
Lord of Lucca, and carry that flowerlike face into the 
midst of his roistering men-at-arms? Coming into the 
dim cathedral from the hot piazza, glaring under a 


July sun, one finds it easier te fancy that the quiet 


58 ITALIAN ‘SCULPTURE 


figure is the image of cool and temperate spring, wait- 
ing there until the heats have passed and the bare 
winter gone. When the first roses bloom in the 
hedges, those quaint sprays of her chaplet will unfold, 
a rose flush will creep down her white brow, the lids 
under the arched brows will lift, the tender bosom 
will rise and fall, and, sheathed in her green mantle, 
while the little loves swing their garlands about her, 
the spring will pass from the shades of the cathedral 
into the light and fragrance of blossoming vineyards. 


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GHIBERTI 
(1378-1455) 


No greater contrast in style, and therefore in result- 
ing esthetic enjoyment, can be imagined than that ex- 
isting between the bas-reliefs of the portal at Bologna, 
and those which were being moulded at the same time 
in Florence for the bronze doors of the Baptistery by 
the young Ghiberti whose trial piece for the commis- 
sion had outclassed both Della Quercia’s and _ Bru- 
nelleschi’s. In going from Bologna to Florence, in 
visiting Ghiberti’ss door after Della Quercia’s, one 
seems at first to shrink from the Titan to the petit- 
maitre in exchanging the stimulus of the muscular 
nude for that of the elegantly draped. The figures 
of the former are but little larger than those of the 
latter, but they completely fill their panels, gaining 
‘by their isolation from natural objects and from 
other persons an added effect of individual power. 
Ghiberti’s figures are seen in relation to a background 


and with other figures, and give not an impression of 
61 ; 


62 ITALIAN SGUEPTURE 


grandeur but of grace, while picturesque effect replaces 
more plastic feeling. 

These doors and those made later for the east en- 
trance of the Baptistery represent the artistic product 
of Ghiberti’s life, for he worked on them from the age 
of twenty-five, and finished the second pair only a few 
years before his death. He filled other commissions 
through the years, but we are unable to judge of his 
work as a jeweller as nothing has escaped the melting 
pot, and his several large statues of bronze, on the 
whole much less successful than his smaller castings, 
show no merits not better displayed in his gates. His 
gates, then, are both the summary and the exposition 
of his characteristics. 

The general plan of the first gates, their division 
into panels, filled by medallions containing reliefs and 
separated by mouldings, was determined by the plan of 
Andrea’s gates to which they were to be pendant. In 
any comparison of the two, their resemblances are seen 
to be but frail threads binding together works which 
are widely dissimilar in technique and in spirit. Sev- 
eral of the panels have for their subjects the same 
incidents, but, whereas Andrea’s main purpose is to 
say a something, Ghiberti’s is to say that something’ 
in the most attractive way. He accomplishes his end 
by abandoning Andrea’s sententiousness, the natural 


plain speech of the sculptor, and by admitting every 


GHIBERTI 
PANELS OF FIRST GATES. BAPTISM OF CHRIST, LEFT PANEL 


Baptistery, Florence 


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ANDREA PISANO 
PANELS OF GATES. BAPTISM OF CHRIST, RIGHT PANEL 


Baptistery, Florence 


GHIBERTI 63 


detail of narrative for which he can find place, and 
every beauty of grouping, of drapery, and of figure 
that study can discover, and, as his best means to an 
end, he begins to make use of linear perspective. 
Both sculptors have made the Baptism of Christ by 
John the subject of one panel. As a narrative of a 
Biblical incident with which we have certain associa- 
tions, Andrea’s is the better. The figures of John 
and of Christ express in their attitudes that impetu- 
osity of the disciple and that earnest dignity of. the 
master which accord with our conceptions of their 
character, and the figures of the angel and of the 
dove add sufficient narrative detail to make the panel 
a good illustration of an incident with which we are 
familiar. If we linger over the panel, it is to find 
ourselves thinking no longer of what speaks directly 
through our eyes, but of the characters and the story, 
in short, following the associations of the subject. 
Now, in Ghiberti’s panel, the starting-point of formal 
subject 1s the same, but our thoughts take us into 
another sphere. As illustration, it holds us only long 
enough for us to note the incongruity of the studied 
attitudes and the effectiveness of the detail. But as 
a composition of lines to be followed and related, as 
modelling which varies from high relief to stiacciato, 
and contrasts the nude with the draped, as an effort 


to use perspective in representing the motion toward 


64 ITALIANs SGULPTURE 


us of the flying dove and the angelic band, it holds 
our eyes and suggests, not as does Andrea’s the asso- 
ciations of the Biblical subject, but those connected 
with the qualities of grace and harmony which, after 
all, are the real subject of the panel. 

Ghiberti’s first gates, as being more nearly in the 
domain of plastic tradition, and less picturesque than 
his second, are, for that reason, considered by several 
critics as more properly beautiful. But the beauty of 
the second pair is unique. There is nothing like it 
in all art. Nowhere else in painting or in sculpture 
have scenes been so beautifully staged. The figures 
seem to be moving to melodies unheard. Their atti- 
tudes and the rhythm of the grouping suggest to 
one’s fancy, now the well-trained classic chorus, now 
the joyful band of Hebrew maidens who-danced with 
Jephthah’s daughter. When they were gilded and 
set up in place, Michelangelo said that they were 
worthy to be the gates of Paradise. Worthy Paradise, 
indeed, in beauty of detail, but as an architectural 
member they are hardly adequate to the “grand” 
style of the Florentine Baptistery. From across the 
street one sees only a square barnlike door, a dusty 
green patch set on the large-spaced pattern of the 
facade, and it is not until one has advanced almost 
to the iron railing, which separates it from contact 


with an appreciative public, that one realizes that it 


GHIBERTI 
SECOND PAIR OF GATES 


Baptistery, Florence 


GHIBERTI 65 


is a door of richly sculptured bronze, the unity of 
whose plan is felt even while the diversity of its com- 
ponents is seen. It consists of ten panels in relief, 
which are separated by a moulding in which at regular 
intervals are placed niched statuettes and heads—a 
plan of division as simple and yet as varied as that 
of a garden plot divided into flower-beds by borders 
wherein the same color occurs at regular intervals, 
but the flowers that make each color spot are sprung 
from different seed. The heads placed at the corners 
of the panels are some of them portraits, some ideal, 
and the statuettes are similar only in their exquisite 
erace and finish. As for the panels, what wonderful 
seed sown there has blossomed into shapes of youths 
and maidens, and stately elders grouped before spa- 
cious porticos, beneath trees, and under skies through 
which are flying the angelic hosts! One sees at once 
why Ghiberti is said to have made “ pictures of bronze 
on a canvas of steel.” He has placed his figures of 
varying proportions in landscape and _ architectural 
backgrounds at varying distances from the eye, mak- 
ing use of the laws of linear perspective to perfect 
the illusion of a third dimension. The liking to call 


b] 


them “pictures in bronze” comes more from the 
mind’s recognition of the skilful use of many planes 
and of graduated proportions, than from actual, visual 


impression of depth. For although photographs of 


F 


66 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


the reliefs look much like photographs of paintings, so 
marvellous has been the application of the laws of 
linear perspective, yet in reality aerial perspective is 
as necessary here for effects of space as in any of 
Ucello’s painted problems in the “dolce cosa.” So 
many are the charms of the crowd of little figures, 
that one is in no haste to read the stories of the 
panels. Each is delightful just in itself, without 
thought of its réle in the narrative. So gracefully 
posed are they, so elegantly draped, so exquisitely 
wrought, that one quite longs to take them in one’s 
hands, to finger them, examine each perfect little 
whole on all sides. Yet this feeling for the separate 
figure, akin as it is to our feeling toward the bijou, is, 
when we consider the figures in their relations to 
each other and to the backgrounds, lost in a surpris- 
ing largeness of effect, in a recognition of significant 
action taking place in spacious surroundings. How 
little actual size restrains greatness and dignity of 
impression is illustrated by the panel whose limits 
expand to furnish a fit setting for the visit of the 
Queen of Sheba to Solomon. The meeting takes 
place before a vast palace whose porticos stretch far 
back into the distance. Attendant upon the royal 
personages are their respective retinues, a crowd of 
figures, counsellors, women, men-at-arms. The sug- 


gestion of a crowd of people has been obtained before 


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GHIBERTI 67 


by use of fewer figures, as witness the procession of 
the Parthenon. The marvel here is that so many fio 
ures have been disposed without confusion in so 
limited a space. Ghiberti’s mastery of perspective is 
well-nigh absolute. The figures in the immediate 
foreground are in the round, and project beyond the 
cornice of the panel. The relief subtly and con- 
stantly diminishes until a few lines drawn on the 
background represent the figures farthest away from 
us. Each remains in its proper plane, each has free- 
dom of movement. The halves of the panel balance 
perfectly, and Ghiberti’s consummate skill in compo- 
sition is shown in the variety in grouping and in atti- 
tude of the figures making up the balanced parts. 
Contrast also the listening dignity of the attendants 
who are assembled about the royal personages with the 
animation of the gossiping groups who wait in the outer 
court. These latter contain some beautiful figures of 
youths. The horseman at the right is worthy a place 
amongst the Athenian youth of the Parthenon frieze, 
and the youths in the foreground, in their finely 
wrought armor and their carefully draped cloaks, have 
a vigor and beauty of form which might make them 
seem indeed a “renaissance” of the youth of Antiquity. 
And when, to their company, we add from the other 
panels and the mouldings other types of beauty, the 
angels who appear to Abraham, the lovely, newly 


68 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


created Eve, the sons of Noah, the young David, etc., 
we have a pageant of selected types whose beauty 
and variety remind one of the year’s procession of 
flowers. 

Indeed the keynote is selection, which admits no 
element, not even the smallest detail, that is not capable 
of adding to the sum total of enjoyment. The inven- 
tiveness and richness of detail must have delighted the 
Florentines who were, and are, peculiarly susceptible 
to the appeal of cumulative detail. The panel which 
relates the story of Noah is almost as delightfully 
garrulous as a fairy tale. There is pleasure merely in 
the recognition of the animals who march so gravely 
around the ark, and the several stock incidents in the 
life of the patriarch, his coming from the ark, his sacri- 
fice, and his drunkenness before his sons are all related 
with fulness of detail, even while they are all combined 
into one harmonious composition. He who is versed in 
the Scriptures sees with amazement that in each panel 
are several scenes, yet so clever is the composition 
that each panel appears to the eye as one scene, and, 
without sacrifice of clarity or harmony, there is an 
immense gain in richness and interest. Far more 
study is necessary to gain an adequate appreciation 
of the skill in composition and ‘in technique of these 
famous doors upon which Ghiberti spent the greater 
part of his life. The excitement of overcoming diff- 


GHIBERTI 69 


culties in casting, etc., the pleasure of mastering the 
principles of perspective, the unremitting search after 
beauty, were more to the artist than were the formal 
subjects. And we, too, when we have once compre- 
hended the stories, set them aside and take our en- 
joyment from what meets the eye and leads the 
thought into other regions than those of the old book. 
In its charm of variety for the eye in small compass, 
the door is more properly goldsmith’s work than 
sculpture. Yet its nobility of scope and beauty glorify 
it into a kind of sculpture never dreamed of before, 
and it makes a unique esthetic appeal which is not 
that of sculpture, nor of painting, nor of goldsmith 
work, but has some flavor of them all. The labor of 
thirty years of hand and brain, the study of the classic 
and of nature, have left us grace and beauty incarnated 
in youthful figures who move in rhythmic measure 
through spacious scenes, denizens of a poet’s ‘“ reaim 


of gold.” 


CHAPTER VO | 


f 


- DONATELLO 


* 


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DONATELLO 


(1386-1466) 


GHIBERTI stands for one kind of artistic vision; 
Donatello is typical of another more rare. To the 
first certain qualities of form make so strong and con- 
stant an appeal, that all his work from his earliest to 
his latest seems the continuous effort to find their 
adequate expression. The latter pays no lifelong ser- 
vice to any one ideal combination of qualities, but 
uses varying symbols of form to express what appeals 
to him in different objects at different seasons of his 
life. With men like Ghiberti, it is as if in early life 
they heard a melody which enraptured them. All 
later study and experience from youth to age is forced 
to contribute to their power of reproducing it. Varied, 
enriched, developed as their work grows to be, through 
it all runs the old melody, the stuff of its weaving is 
always the same. In Renaissance painting, Botticelli 
is a familiar illustration of this temperament. In all 


of his pictures he seems to be tracing the same pat- 


oc 


iw 


74 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


tern of line, and face after face suggests the same 
mood. Perhaps this is part of his attraction for the 
present day. In this epoch of specialization, we are 
wonted to the special personal vision, which, when 
genius goes with it, gives us art, if narrow yet intense, 
and of poignant zsthetic appeal. 

In artists like Donatello, however, the energy of 
imagination is so great that it extends itself over a 
broader field, and the intelligence is so penetrating 
that it sees in each object its own significant features. 
Therefore we have sculpture ranging in technique 
from the equestrian statue of Gattamelata to the dell- 
cate bas-relief of the young St. John, and in subject, 
from the joy of singing children to the agonized re- 
pentance of a Magdalen. We recognize his hand in a 
work, not by the appearance of some favorite combina- 
tion of qualities, but in the serious effort to express 
directly and definitely the visual truth of each object. 
In literature, Shakespeare is the perfect illustration of 
this artistic temper. His characters have been created — 
into life, each a personality with which actions and 
speech are congruous, so that, as individuals, they 
are even more real to us than is Shakespeare himself. 
A marvellous ventriloquist is Browning, but we feel 
that it is he, and not his characters, who speaks, despite 
the clever mental makeup. Our enjoyment of subjective 


art will always be limited by mood; objective art, on the 


DONATELLO 75 


contrary, has in its wider scope more chances of meet- 
ing different moods. Ghiberti makes hundreds of fig- 
ures, but no matter with which figure one identifies 
himself, he will find himself stepping to the same 
music. But each of Donatello’s characters moves to 
the music which he alone hears, and, therefore, while 
for us they all have this common characteristic, that 
they communicate life, in each we can live a different 
moment of life. In each there is always on the sculp- 
tor’s part the same sureness in the selection and em- 
phasis of the expressive appearance, and on our part 
the same ease in recognition as if the sense of sight 
had been so quickened that it connects by a hghtning 
flash the processes resulting in sensations, emotions, 
and ideas. Such insight into character, such choice 
of the expressive appearance, such communication of 
the life of forms are Donatello’s characteristics. His 
work, then, is not an orderly progression toward the 
adequate voicing of an ideal, not, as with Ghiberti, 
the unfolding of a perfect flower of art, but each work 
gives its individual impression, and to gain a just idea 
of Donatello each should be studied. But it is pos- 
sible to divide roughly into four chronological periods, 
since certain influences and circumstances of growth 
bind together, although very loosely, certain groups 
of works. There is the monumental period from about 


1405-1433; the classic period from 1433-1444; the 


76 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


period of maturity spent at Padua, 1443-1453; and the 
period including his last years in Florence until 1466. 

Donatello’s earliest commissions were for statues for 
the facade of the Duomo, and for the niches of Orsan- 
michele at Florence. As might be expected from the 
sculptor’s youth and the existent strong tradition of 
cathedral sculpture, there is at first no violent break 
with the conventional types, and yet gradually his 
genius forces a current of life into them such as they 
never knew before, and working as he does from living 
models he makes persons of them one and all. Dona- 
tello begins by imbuing with some semblance of life 
the traditional ecclesiastic characters; he ends by creat- 
ing absolutely new types, expressive, but realistic to the 
verge of ugliness. In the St. George of Orsanmichele 
he best realizes the embodiment of a simple, definite, 
pleasant thought in form as simple and definite and 
pleasant. The bronze figure in the beautiful niche at 
Orsanmichele is a copy of the marble original now in 
the national museum, the Bargello, where, in a plaster 
niche, in indoor light, the weather-stained sturdy figure 
looks strangely out of place. Years of battle with 
the fierce winds and rains of Florence have streaked 
the armor with gray and stained the marble, adding 
immensely to the sentiment, since the scarred shield 
and begrimed face speak of conflict already won. The 
figure stands on both feet, as firmly as a rock, balanced 


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by the heavy shield, and a mantle which fortunately 
falls behind the figure. An effect of a readiness for 
forward action which, as legend hath it, caused Michel- 
angelo upon seeing it to exclaim, “ March!” comes 
from the drawing back of the left leg and shoulder 
and the slight twist of the torso, emphasized by the 
pose of the head and the knitted brows. The satisfac- 
tory firmness of the figure is not the rigidity of the 
armor, but the steady support of muscles underneath. 
The pose has no especial grace or nobility, there is 
no charm of line or modelling. What is it, then, that 
makes the St. George, as every frequenter of the Bar- 
gello knows, one of the most popular of statues? It 
is because it is the well-nigh perfect illustration of one 
of our most familiar and fond imaginations, “the sol- 
dier-saint,” the knight saxs peur et sans reproche stand- 
ing ready in strength of purity and of youth to do 
battle for right. The treatment of the figure, its solid 
mass unweakened by detail, its quiet pose and broad 
modelling, and its alert head, make for the impression 
of youthful strength of body, and the face, unlined as 
yet by age and disillusion, completes the character in 
its resolute brows and chin, its glance of ardent pur- 
pose, and its sweet steady mouth. The bodily forms 
selected stand for few and simple imagined sensations, 
but they connect immediately with a definite stock of 


our pleasantest associations. There is, in looking at it, 


78 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


all the pleasure of recognizing an adequate illustration 
of a favorite thought, and of feeling, as we identify 
ourselves with the character, the working in us of 
its invigorating qualities of youth, courage, and hope. 

A transition in thought, if not in date, between the, 
in a sense, Gothic sculpture of this first period, and the 
next period when classic influence shows itself, is made 
by the shrine in Santa Croce, with its bas-relief of the 
Annunciation. The architectural framing, in its design 
and its details of mouldings, etc., is evidently inspired 
by the classic, but the simplicity of thought and execu- 
tion in the figures connects them with the St. George. 
The relief and the frame are cut from fzetra serena, 
a soft gray stone, and the details of the mouldings and 
the background are picked out in gold. The figures, 
almost in the round, are of the same race as St. George. 
Broadly and simply modelled as they are, their ample 
proportions and smooth youthful faces make clear to 
us our pleasure in tranquil, vigorous bodies and un- 
troubled spirits. The Madonna turns a bit awkwardly, 
as if startled by the appearance of the messenger, but 
the certainty expressed by the angel’s steady pose and 
earnest gesture 1s answered by the serenity of her face. 
As with the St. George, the work is satisfactory illus- 
tration because of its inclusion of the true associa- 
tions and its exclusion of false associations. An 


angel filled with joyous solemnity bears God’s word 


at 


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DONATELLO 
ANNUNCIATION 


S. Croce, Florence 


DONATELLO 709 


to the chosen woman, who trembles, yet rejoices. 
That is the familiar subject. The associations that 
cluster about it have been created by the simple Bibli- 
cal narrative, and are here adequately suggested by the 
distinction of the figures, the serenity of expression, 
the delicacy and purity of color and ornament. Nor 
is the hint of mysticism lacking, if one views the relief 
from the nave or the farther aisle. Seen through the 
gloom, the broadness of modelling, and the color and 
softness of the stone combine to make the figures 
creations of gray mist, which, in the trembling light 
cast upon them by the red glow of the shrine lamp 
and the flickering votive candles, seem to palpitate 
with emotion. 

Donatello had always been a student of the antique. 
During the years following a visit to Rome in 1433, he 
restored many ancient marbles for Cosmo de’ Medici, 
made for hima set of medallions for his palace after 
antique gems, and, in other works of this time, shows 
a classic influence which reflects not only the enthu- 
siasm of his patron, but his own admiration as well. 
Yet for him, even more than for the other masters of 
the Early Renaissance, the antique is a teacher of gen- 
eral principles of technique and proportion, not a 
formula to be repeated. Its influence is present in 
these years as a force to modify his strong bent toward 


realism, and marks a period containing the works of 


80 ITADIAN. SCULEDURE 


greatest beauty. The most obvious traces of classic 
form are found in the David, a bronze figure of a 
youth, made for Cosmo de’ Medici, and now in the Bar- 
gello. The first nude bronze of the Renaissance, it 
must go back to Roman times for a predecessor. Its 
easy pose, with one hip thrown out, is distinctly remi- 
niscent of that type of athlete deriving from the Praxite- 
lean. The bodily forms are most interesting in being 
a combination of ideal and natural, as if made with the 
antique in mind and with a model before the eyes. 
The two elements are easily distinguishable, but are 
felt to vibrate in harmony with the life of the whole 
figure. Perhaps herein lies the charm, in the naive 
yet amazingly clever union of the ideal with the realis- 
tic, the echoes of the antique blent with the strident 
modern. The spare, yet well-covered, torso, and the 
legs so graceful in action and in outline, contrast 
with bony, protruding shoulder blades, and awkward 
skinny arms, apparently truthfully copied from some 
young Florentine. The same charm exists in the con- 
trast between the classic details of the armor, the giant's 
casque, and the rustic hat (is it a leaf from the edge 
of the brook, or the petasos of Mercury?) which covers 
the long locks, and shades a face whose dimpled 
chin and low brow are those of an Italian goatherd 
such as one may meet any day in the campagna. Who 
seeks in this slight languid boy an illustration of Bibli- 


é; DONATELLO 
BRONZE DAVID 


Bargello, Florence 


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A ee eo meine me oe Me 


DONATELLO 81 


cal story must perforce content himself with what sug- 
gestion he can find in the stone half concealed in the 
left hand, in the sword, and in the head: of the poor 
giant himself whose beard is so carefully arranged and 
whose helmet is so beautifully wrought that I fear his 
chief value is artistic rather than narrative. Evidently 
Donatello himself has been more concerned with mak- 
ing the head a fine decorative base for his statue than 
with the expression of the dramatic or the moral. His 
interest has been in the modelling of the nude, in the 
goldsmith work of detail, and our pleasure comes from 
the contemplation of these same things. In a bronze, 


) 


the “architectonic ” appeal of structure, the hold of the 
muscles on the bones, is more obvious to us than in a 
marble where the material gives a chance to represent 
the texture of the skin. This figure, by the careful 
severity of the modelling, the apparent “hardness” of 
the muscle, gives the effect best brought out by bronze, 
and its size makes effective in bronze what would be 
insignificant in marble. The decorative details speak 
of Donatello’s early training in a goldsmith’s shop as 
well as of his study of classic ornament. The helmet, 
with its design of busy cupids, is worthy of a Roman 
hero, and each strap and greave is as_ beautifully 
wrought as a bit of jewelry. Of all the Davids to 
follow from other masters, none compares with this in 


masterly treatment of material, and in that charm which 


G 


82 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


suggests, now the youthful athlete, now the herd boy 
of the campagna. 

The effect of Donatello’s visits to Rome appears in 
a quite different way in another work of this period, 
the Cantoria or singing-loft, made for the Duomo in 
competition with Luca della Robbia. The classic 
influence is shown in the architectural and ornamental 
forms, and in the use of mosaic to fill in the spaces 
of the background. A favorite Roman motive, the 
cupid, becomes the theme as a band of dancing chil- 
dren. They are broadly treated with reference to the 
height above the eye, and make a picture of living 
line, and of pleasant light and shade, and give an im- 
pression of childish joy in abandonment to music. In 
its presentation of one simple idea, the movement of 
dancing children, it contrasts with Luca’s loft, whose 
panels sing with the music of children and youths 
and divers instruments. Donatello’s direct subject is 
clearly the whole gamut of movement possible to 
childhood. And its sense appeal is the stronger be- 
cause the child is the only type used, and each atti- 
tude reénforces and enlarges the appeal to one type; 
and in retrospect it is more delightful than Luca’s, 
because the one definite feeling caused by it is more 
easily revived. Luca’s is more elaborate and careful 
work, and, because of its variety and associations has 


a stronger attraction for those who prefer the pleas- 


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LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 
DONATELLO 
CANTORIE 


Museo del Duomo, Florence 


84 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


to see. There appear his boldness and originality, 
because this is the first equestrian statue since the 
Marcus Aurelius of Rome; his energy and industry, 
because he has made a careful anatomical study of a 
horse —no small thing to do when one is fifty-eight 
years old; his power of seeing the essential visual 
facts in objects and of expressing character thereby, 
because, although a regiment of equestrian statues has 
been’ made since, this of a petty captain of the fif- 
teenth centurv is still one of the finest in the world. 
Consider your nearest park statue. Perhaps the horse 
is most cleverly made; he rears with great spirit upon 
his hind legs, and, most like, his rider, famous general 
though he be, serves the ignoble end of a lump of 
lead to hold Pegasus to earth. Perhaps the figure, 
dignified and commanding, is only spoiled by being 
set upon so fantastic a base. Or perhaps the group 
is picturesquely treated,—one is glad to catch sight 
of it as one moves by at a brisk pace, to feel the 
communication of its motion, its pressure against the 
air, obtaining the same kind of effect that one gets in 
all its intensity in the moving pictures of the biograph. 
A five-minutes’ stop of steady contemplation would 
bore us, would make us quite sensible of the emptiness 
of its content as a whole. The Gattamelata is great 
because it has none of these defects, and some positive 


merits. There is, to be sure, a defect of observation in 


DONATELLO 
GATTAMELATA 
Padua 


DONATELLO 85 


the movement of the legs of the horse, but he is well 
studied for all that, and gives our imagination all that 
it finds necessary. Moreover, the horse is properly 
subordinated in interest to the rider, who is one of 
the most living of Donatello’s creations. And yet, it 
is not a portrait of Gattamelata, it is a portrait of 
Gattamelata-condottiere-on-his-horse. A vast difference 
there! As a study of character, it gains much of its 
force from the fact that, for the first time, the sculptor 
has a chance to portray a man of his own day with- 
out the toga-cloak disguise of a Biblical personage, 
clad in his own proper equipment, and as the centre 
of a contemporary pageant. And yet, although it is 
a moment, and a man of the Renaissance that he 
has set there, he has represented those things that 
are eternal, namely, the powers of a man to command 
his fellows. Where the impression of a_ personality 
might so easily have been sunk in the exhilaration 
of action, in rich effect of armor and harness, it is 
the character of the man and the reality of the mo- 
ment that impress us. There were crises in those 
days, and men to meet them! There is this thought 
for the mind, and there is inexhaustible treasure for 
the eye. What sureness of modelling in the head, 
what exquisite exactness of bone, and hollow, and 
wrinkle in the face, and in the ungloved hand! How 


carefully the horse has been studied, joint, and muscle, 


86 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


and vein! Here is a war-horse of the Middle Ages! 
With the smooth surface of his powerful body contrasts 
the rich trappings and armor. “One of the charming 
putti from ‘the richly decorated saddle, one square 
inch of the horse’s trappings, would furnish matter for 
a discourse and make the reputation of a collection.” 

Donatello’s last years were passed for the most part 
at Florence, in designing and beginning the two pul- 
pits of bronze for the church of San Lorenzo. A 
phenomenon which often strikes one in following the 
mental life of men of genius as shown in their works 
is that, in the last years of their lives, their thoughts 
tend to become: too deep for formulation, and 
their art suffers under the pressure of matter too 
weighty for its expression. King Lear is not a suc- 
cess on the stage. Donatello’s latest designs for San 
Lorenzo are so charged with dramatic intention that 
they overstrain the limits of relief, That they are in 
great part the work of his pupils, must be taken into 
account when, at the first glance, and hindered by the 
gloom of the church, it seems impossible to make out 
the figures. After some study one gets the subjects 
and the action, and is aware that they have conveyed 
to him a sense of the confusion of crowds, of the 
dramatic aspects of the scenes of the passion, and an 
echo of the emotion that is aroused by the Crucifixion 


of Tintoretto. But he is conscious that it is his own 


DONATELLO 
BRONZE PULPIT 


S. Lorenzo, Florence 


DONATELLO 87 


thought, rather than what meets his eye, that is lead- 
ing him into well-known paths of association. Now 
and again a part of a figure, a thigh or a shoulder, or 
the powerful torso of a Roman centurion makes the 
appeal of generous modelling, but the planes are so 
confused that all is blurred that should be clear, and 
only fragmentary, broken sensations are possible. In a 
photograph one grasps at once the boldness and origi- 
nality of the scenes, and the invention and beauty of 
the details. But it is another matter to stand under the 
sombre bronze boxes in the dark church and strain 
eyes and neck in looking. The man who looks at 
sculpture because it gives him pleasure, and is honest 
in his accounts with himself, may feel that the fatigue 
of working for his impression rather overpays its value 
when obtained. 

Now, although in his latest work Donatello seems 
to have strained his art, yet his influence upon Renais- 
sance sculpture really tended to keep it within true 
plastic limits and to balance the picturesque influence 
exerted by Ghiberti. His positive influence must be 
looked for in Florentine painting rather than in sculp- 
ture. For his studies of the nude, of anatomy, and of 
drapery were of great service to a school of painting 
which concerned itself before all with the representa- 
tion of form. For the rest, we read that he was much 


beloved of his friends for a kind of simplicity of nature 


88 ' ITALIAN SCULPTURE aa 


which found fine clothes unbearable an 
estate not to be endured. He probably never b 
himself about the ethics or zsthetics of his ¢ rt 


enjoyed his /este and spent his workdays in 
labor of head and hand—a true artist life where 


a 


profit. 


And, 


eet Tighe . ee 
PCHAPTER VI’. | 


LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 


Vise 


rial EER IVI 


LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 


(1400-1482) 


Wit Ghiberti and Donatello ranks Luca Della 
_ Robbia, the third bright star in the Early Renaissance 
heavens. But little younger than they, he sprang from 
the same soil, and came under the same influences. 
The same sun and rain, the awakening to nature and 
Antiquity, aided in his growth as in theirs. But each 
developed after his kind. From nature they were busy 
getting much the same sort of fact: the difference in 
temperament comes out more evidently in their respec- 
tive attitudes toward the antique. Ghiberti was an 
enthusiast, he reckoned time by Olympiads, he collected 
antique marbles and was enraptured with their beauty. 
On his wonderful gates he transposes the Hebrew 
narrative into suave Vergilian metre, melodious and 
graceful. Donatello has studied the remains of An- 
tiquity at Rome, he restores marbles for Cosmo de’ 
Medici, he makes medallions in the classic style, he 


constantly uses classic decorative motifs. Yet he is 
oI 


Q2 ITALTAN, SCULPIURE 


always at heart a realist. The classic but frees him 
from medizval convention, gives him leave to be faith- 
ful to nature, but teaches him how to see it. Now 
Luca, with scantier knowledge of the antique, and 
showing in his work fewer formal traces of it, is the 
most nearly Greek of them all, for he approaches his 
work in the Greek spirit with that fine plastic intelli- 
gence which feels the limits of its material and brings 
out the greatest beauty within those limits. Neither 
Ghiberti nor Donatello held the classic attitude toward 
their subjects. The first sunk the plastic in the pic- 
turesque, the second in the naturalistic and dramatic. 
Luca’s range of feeling is not great, but he is always 
truly plastic in its expression. The classic arouses in 
Ghiberti an enthusiasm for grace and harmony, which, 
uniting with his Gothic inheritance, produces a new 
and unique beauty. Donatello learns from the classic 
to be faithful to nature and to his own view of her, but 
his thought is so entirely that of his own day that his. 
work is most unantique, most typically Renaissance. 
Luca’s subjects are, on their face, quite as unclassic as 
can be. No Greek would have thought of represent- 
ing mothers and babies. But the impression which 
those quiet mothers, rounded babies, and blithe angels 
make upon us is that there exists a joyful oneness of 
physical and spiritual health, which, after all, is surely 


the Greek motif translated into the vernacular. 


LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 
MADONNA OF THE: ROSES 


Bargello, Florence 


POCA DELLA. ROBBIA 93 


His work is commissioned from ecclesiastic sources, 
or is at least to answer a religious purpose, and must 
be an Adoration, or a Visitation, or the patron saints, 
but, despite varying names and symbols, Luca’s blue 
and white is singing over and over. the same song of 
serene physical well-being, animated by a mind as tran- 
quil. There are critics who trace the evolution of 
Luca’s conception of the Madonna through his _ types. 
Here he is thinking of the Queen of Heaven, there 
of ‘simple maternity, etc.,a species of botanizing which 
~ may add to the valuable information which we store 
away on our bookshelves, but for which we care not 
a whit when we come upon Luca’s flowers in their 
locum proprium, the cool dark of churches, or grow- 
ing in narrow dirty streets as the dust-powdered gen- 
tians in the highway, and accomplishing our happiness 
much as do all of “nature’s old felicities.”” One may 
see in the Bargello a fine collection of Della Robbias, 
as clean and shining as any good housewife’s best 
china. The polish vaguely disturbs one for a time, 
although it perhaps intensifies the impression of exqul- 
site cleanliness, an integral part of a charm which is 
made up of all those elements of color and of form 
which spell refreshment to our senses and convince 
the spirit that innocence, simplicity, and Joy are as 
common as motherhood. 


The works of Luca, in theme, color, and form are the 


94 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


notes of an exquisite chord. The modelling is broad, 
because the clay surface must be smooth enough to 
take evenly its coat of enamel, but shows a knowledge 
of form as exact as Donatello’s, and a love of its beau 
ties as keen as Ghiberti’s. The faces are not classic, 
but very modern in delicacy of feature and sweetness 
of expression. Select the sweetest faces of any nation- 
ality, and you will find Della Robbia types. They 
speak then a universal language equally intelligible to 
the different nationalities who pass before them in the 
museum, equally intelligible to the different sects and 
ranks who pass their shrines in the streets. The mes- 
sage of youth, of health, of serenity, is always there to 
be read, and, in addition, each work has of course its 
special associations, as it has its individual forms. 
Luca conveys much by the expression of his faces. 
Compare, for example, the gracious worldliness of ex- 
pression in the group of the Via dell’ Agnolo with the 
rapt devotion of the group of the Bargello. In the 
former, the attendant angels, justifiably proud of their 
service, seem to mark with alert eyes the effect of the 
benediction of the divine child. In the latter, the 
angels and the Madonna herself gaze upon the divine 
infant with eyes which have the clairvoyant expression 
of those of the Sistine Madonna. 

That Luca’s charm depends upon his skilful obser- 


vation of the limits which he sets is clear enough in 


LUCA DELLA ROBBIA 


AGNOLO, FLORENCE 


VIA DELL’ 


, Florence 


THE BARGELLO 


tte 


ZoOCA DEELA ROBBIA 95 


considering the later Della Robbias who violated those 
limits and whose work steadily deteriorates. 

Andrea, Luca’s nephew, was, to be sure, a man of 
great talent, and his work is often as lovely as Luca’s. 
In general, however, it is more elaborate in composi- 
tion and in ornamental details. 

One of the loveliest of Andrea’s reliefs, and one 
which circumstances combine to render most pleasure- 
giving, is that of the Coronation at the convent of the 
Osservanza in the environs of Siena. It is usually in 
the spring that the traveller finds himself in Siena, 
and his visit to the Osservanza takes him out from 
the town into a spring landscape that tunes his mood 
to the spirit of the early Della Robbias. Moreover, 
he has left behind him in that grim town of Siena, 
whose towers and battlements are, as he looks across 
the ravine, a frowning silhouette against the blue, an 
art whose memories lie back of his eyelids like those 
of strange dreams. He remembers the treasures of 
design in the rich gloom of the cathedral; he sees 
the brilliant frescos of the library with the red, and 
green, and gold splendors of its ceiling, and he has 
not forgotten the primitifs of the Accademia, those 
Byzantine Virgins clad in the glowing ashes of their 
splendor, and with some element, almost of malevo- 
lence, in their gaze. With such memories, as of the 


occasional strange gleams and palpitations of sunrise 


96 ITALIAN) SCULPTURE 


in this weird hill country, the Della Robbia to which 
he comes seems to afford the contrast of the blue-and- 
white familiarity of high morning. Tranquillized by 
the sanity and serenity of nature under this blue dome 
of spring sky, he is in the mood to fancy that Andrea 
has incarnated those qualities in his figures. The for- 
mal subject, to be sure, is the Coronation, a subject 
which the Renaissance treats as a well-known melody, 
making its essentials always the same, the grace of 
Mary’s head bent in meekness, the tender beneficence 
of the Holy Father, the rapture of attending angels, 
and the joyful adoration of the saints, and the result 
one of the loveliest lyrics of the Christian anthology. 

Andrea's treatment is the simple one that belongs 
to his material, and is only noticeable in a choice of 
refined, graceful forms, which make the expression and 
the sentiment one. The composition is simple and 
clear. The two halves of the panel balance pleasantly, 
are charmingly diversified in grouping and in individual 
attitude, and are connected with the central action by 
the ring of cherubim. There is also a variety in the 
expression of the faces which makes personalities, not 
only of the saints, but even of the heads of the cher- 
ubic frame. The figures are accurate, and satisfacto- 
rily felt under their simple drapery. The modelling 
of the faces and hands is careful and delicate, that in 


especial of the thin faces of the maie saints being of 


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ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA 
THE CORONATIO™ 


Osservanza, Sien» 


EUCA. DELLA ROBBIA 97 


a degree of exquisiteness that would be more evident 
in other material. The color is almost pure blue and 
white, for Andrea was even more sparing in his use 
of color than was Luca. A duller blue is used for 
the cavern in the predella, the palm of martyrdom is 
green, and the details of drapery, halos, etc., are lightly 
gilt. The sense elements and the emotional are the 
notes of a chord sounded together. Certain qualities 
-of form which very commonly exist before our eyes in 
actuality, yet are so embedded in coarser stuff that 
they escape our notice, are here refined from the acci- 
dental, and made clear to our appreciation, and _ like- 
wise, certain qualities of character, beauties of holiness, 
are made clear to our apprehension, as it were the 
flowering to our inward eye of some sweet seed existent 
in humanity. 

The later Della Robbias exceed the limit, first in 
introducing other colors in great masses which give 
a disgustingly crude effect, and also in departing from 
a simplicity of composition which included only a few 
figures and scanty accessories. When Giovanni makes 
an Adoration in which he tries to find place for the 
familiar properties of the contemporary painter, and, 
moreover, colors them to resemble a heap of winter 
vegetables, his art product is as far removed from 


Luca’s as the squash is from the white rose. 


elo eal Ba od Re 


fire OR oCULPTORS: OF THE EARLY 
RENAISSANCE 


cae Sia tlue Rev It 


THE MINOR SCULPTORS OF THE EARLY RENAISSANCI: 
THe MarBLE WORKERS 


DoNATELLO’Ss communication of vitalities, Ghiberti’s 
gilded rhythms, Luca’s blue and white divinations 
of the Hellenic, make us the richer by three individual 
habits of seeing form; but the works of the younger 
generation, of the minor sculptors, and speaking now 
more especially of the marble workers, are so much 
the product of one habit of sight that they continue 
us in the same mood with variation only of the sub- 
tlest, and might almost be, in effect upon us, the expres- 
sion of one temperament. As the production of men 
of an equal calibre, who have been trained to an equal 
dexterity of hand, and who are working in the same 
spirit to meet the same ideal of taste, the work of the 
minor sculptors in marble bears the stamp of its period 
more obviously than does the work of the three mas- 
ter sculptors whose varying genius reacted against the 


same environment with distinctly individual results. 


IOI 


102 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


The same convulsion of the earth’s surface forms the 
peaks and the foothills, but the winds and the streams 
of the heights will carve for each an individual pro- 
file, while the foothills will always resemble one an- 
other. As in a literary period marked as such by 
certain general characteristics, as for instance in that 
defined period of the Elizabethan dramatists, the time- 
spirit, so clearly present in the work of a Peel, a 
Greene, or a Nash as a shaping force, is to be traced 
in its Shakespeare as itself directed by his individual 
spirit, so the forces which but aid in the development 
of the great sculptors of this period have their own 
way in the moulding of the minor men. Donatello 
had his moments of caring for surface effect, and 
Ghiberti occupied himself often with decorative detail, 
and Luca is frequently content with merely facial 
expression of limited, quiet feeling. But these quali- 
ties found here and there in the masters’ works, and 
included as elements of their effect, are the ever pres- 
ent and determining characteristics of the works of 
the minor sculptors. As a result, and with the mar- 
ble workers especially in mind, one feels that the 
sense appeal of the many works is practically one and 
the same, and that the emotional appeal varies only 
by the slightly differing suggestions of portraits and 
of favorite types. And therefore the distinctive zs- 
thetic appeal of the marbles of the Early Renaissance, 


~ — ~ - = 


RE SR ER 9 MER RE op 


ly FRA A 


BENEDETTO DA MAIANO 
PULPIT 


S. Croce, Florence 


MINOR SCULPTORS 103 


which, resulting from the harmonic treatment of light 
and shade, and from the selection of rarities of struc- 
ture, is so productive of delicate imagined sensations 
and of lyric emotion, is found in its essential simplicity 
in the work of such men as Maiano, Desiderio, the 
Rossellini and Mino, and in what we have called the 
“originals” of the period, in the architectural decora- 
tive sculpture of pulpit and tomb, in the portrait, and 


in the relief. 


Benedetto da Matano, 1442-1497 


Maiano’s pulpit in Santa Croce is an epitome of the 
decorative values of marble carving. Its warm color, 
a coffee color with a pinkish suggestion, and the soft 
smooth appearance of its surface, obtained by both the 
mechanical treatment of the finely grained stone and 
also by the grades of relief of its carving, make it 
seem less a construction of marble than of some mate- 
rial akin to jade or ivory with all of their peculiar 
power of touch appeal to the skin. Considered archi- 
tecturally, it has the studied elegance of proportion and 
the rhythm of structure which distinguish an artist's 
creation from a natural object, and in the impression 
which it makes of human intelligence behind effect 
it gives a meaning to the word “art.” Its decorative 
plan makes it an elaborate frame and support for five 


panels in relief whose subjects are incidents in the 


104 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


founding of the Franciscan order. As may be seen in 
the illustrations, the reliefs follow in narrative treatment 
the frescos of Ghirlandajo, and in technique they are 
related, in their picturesque quality, to the manner of 
Ghiberti, although a less skilful use of perspective 
results in less agreeability of illusion. The figures, 
clad in ungainly monk’s robes, are good in attitude 
but deficient in interest, and while true to the monk- 
ish type are yet without personality. The intrinsic 
qualities of the reliefs are best discerned in the terra- 
cotta models now preserved at the South Kensington 
Museum, for in Santa Croce their values are much 
affected by their setting, and the mind refuses for long 
to consider them apart from it or as other than organic 
parts of a whole. Interest in them as illustration fades 
before the pleasure of running one’s eye down the 
mouldings of the cornice, down the channel of a fluted 
column, along the flourishes of a console, and over the 
slant of the base to the attaching point on the great 
pier. And for the lateral glance there is first the 
flat frieze beneath the cornice whose repeating notes 
are the objects of the passion, and next the richer 
frieze below the panel with its effect of rounded fruits 
and cherubic faces. The recesses between the consoles 
have two sides embroidered in a flat floral pattern 
seen originally against a gilded background, and the 


third side is niched to receive a statuette of a virtue 


yraseeeneeie es en 


sea sb ese oe apes mea a Se 


MAIANO 


RANCIS 


F 
Croce, Florence 


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DEATH OF ST 


in S 


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From Pulp 


DESIDERIO 
TOMB MARSUPPINI 


S. Croce, Florence 


RINK oGULPLORS 105 


which in its finish and perfection is worthy of embodi- 


ment in a precious material. 


Desiderio da Settignano, 1428-1464 


As faultless in architectural composition as Maiano’s 
pulpit, but more original in its decorative surfaces 
and far more sculptural in its elements, is that tomb 
placed across the nave in Santa Croce, made for the 
Cardinal Marsuppini by Desiderio. Its figures are life- 
size and unusually well studied for tomb statuary. 
The slender children who support the armorial shields 
are not the ordinary boneless and characterless putti, 
and the youths above, who bear the garlands on their 
shoulders, are also uncommonly animated and realistic. 
The lunette with the Madonna and Child is unfortu- 
nately much in the shadow of the arch. But enough 
is seen to show qualities which remind one of Dona- 
tello’s manner at its sweetest. The focus of the com- 
position is the sarcophagus and effigy, the richness of 
which is emphasized against a plainly panelled back- 
ground of dark porphyry. The light is reflected in 
many modulations from skilfully varied textures, from 
the waxen smoothness of the face and hands, from 
the flat stencilled-like surface of the stiff drapery of 
cloth of gold, from the scales forming the covered 
top of the sarcophagus, and from the foliaged corners 
of the base. Other Renaissance tombs show mastery 


106 ITALIAN. SCULPTORS 


of marble technique, and possess ornament and reliefs 
of much beauty; but no other equals Desiderio’s mas- 
terpiece in giving an impression of a whole of which 


every part is original and charming. 


Antonio Rossellino, 1427-1479 


Even Rossellino’s famous tomb of the young Cardi- 
nal of Portugal at San Miniato cannot, in composi- 
tion and in ornamental detail, equal the merits of 
Desiderio’s; but as often happens as compensation for 
unevenness of excellence, there is the emphasized 
appeal of a special quality. The special appeal is here, 
I think, to be found in the expressiveness of the figures, 
—an expressiveness not nearly so confined to facial 
meaning as was habitual with both contemporary sculp- 
tors and painters. or instance, the two angels who 
bear up the roundel of the Madonna advance with a 
swift action of the limbs, and there is a gayety of move- 
ment in the ripple of draperies and of extended wings 
which reénforces the expression of blithe agitation in 
their faces, and in the faces of the cherubim surround- 
ing the relief. There is in their alertness a kinship to 
the expression of the infants of the sarcophagus, and 
even to that of the Madonna, whose downcast lids 
seem to veil an intelligence of glance belonging to a 
personality partially revealed by the half-smiling mouth. 
The animation, apparently so near the surface, of the 


uy 


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tI 


ehh 


Seabees 


ANTONIO ROSSELLINO 
TOMB CARDINAL OF PORTUGAL 


S. Miniato, Florence 


ca 


MINOR SCULPTORS | 107 


attendant figures but makes more impressive the still- 
ness of the sepulchral figure from which the tide of 
thought and feeling has withdrawn into hidden depths. 
The repose of the figure is absolute. The folded 
hands are exquisitely modelled, as is also the face, with 
a feeling for that delicate bony structure which the 
eye delights to trace in emaciation and associates with 
the pathetic refinement of illness and the contempla- 
tive life. Scarcely a line marks the face, and _ its 
placidity accords well with our idea that death is the 
kindly blotter-out from the human countenance of all 
records of life’s passions, and too with our fancy of the 
character of this virgin cardinal, who “lived the life, 
we may say, rather of an angel than a man.” To the 
Christian no stronger symbol could be given of a spirit 
sealed in slumber to await its resurrection; and in show- 
ing impressively the dignity that the human body may 
express when freed of all the accidental agitations of life, 
it suggests equally noble possibilities to be obtained 
by the human spirit in less troubled spheres. 


Mino da Fresole, 1430-1484 


Of all the minor sculptors, the name of Mino is 
most familiar, made so by the number of works attrib- 
uted to him rather than by their surpassing excellence. 
In fact Mino was overburdened with commissions, and, 


as often follows popularity, much of the sculpture called 


108 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


his is the product of his atelier. If he be judged by 
striking a balance of his many works, he could not 
rank with the Rossellini, or with Desiderio, or with 
Civitali, for his work is very uneven in value. At 
its worst it is insipid and stupid. But at its best it 
has a sweet distinction of technique and of type which, 
in this age of lyric sculpture, gives it the place due to 
exquisite expression of refined, if limited, sentiment. 
Mino’s forte was the amalgamation of sculpture, 
preferably basso relievo, with architectural elements, 
using such nicety of taste that the monument or altar 
so made is not sculpture framed, nor a small facade 
decorated with sculpture, but has the true artistic 
unity of a poem or of a musical composition. The 
altar at Fiesole, although an early work, is evidently 
one upon which he worked with care, and achieved an 
exquisite result as compact as a sonnet. It is made 
of a milky marble of fine grain treated with the waxy 
finish characteristic of Mino, and unstained by incense 
as it 1s, the full value of its delicate carving and chan- 
nelling may be appreciated. The figures, with the 
exception of the two infants, the Christ and the lit- 
tle St. John which are in the round, are modelled 
with much accuracy and grace, but there has been 
little attempt to realize the figures as figures. The 
heads and the hands indeed have been carefully treated 
for expressive value, but the bodies are only suggested 


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MINO DA FIESOLE 
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS 
Cathedral, Fiesole 


MINO DA FIESOLE 


MADONNA, 


Bust OF A WOMAN 


MINOR SCULPTORS 109 


enough to make plausible the draperies and the 
attachment of heads and hands. The Madonna is 
planned on a larger scale than are the attendant saints, 
but her kneeling attitude of adoration lessens the 
unpleasantness of resulting effect. The droop of the 
head, showing thereby the eyelids and the forehead 
and the hair with its pointed fillet of pearls, comes 
with Mino to be like a favorite cadence in a poet's 
lines. 

It is a cadence repeated in the relief of the Madonna 
of the Bargello, which, whether actually from Mino's 
chisel or not, has the charm of his types in the arched 
brows, the curve of the drooped lids, the cleft chin, 
and the strangely contrasting blunted ears. The head 
is set rather haughtily upon a long neck whose lines 
flow gracefully into the outline of shoulders not too 
correctly modelled. The child is in high relief, its 
feet projecting beyond the frame. The finish of the 
nude is exquisite, and the long slender hands rest upon 
the child’s body with pleasant pressure. The drapery 
suggests, as is usual with Mino, some pliant stuff with 
peculiar wrinkles and shallow folds. _ Its border of 
gold holds it to the gilded background and the frame, 
against which the relief, with its satiny finish, reminds 
one of a dimmed pearl in a setting of tarnished gold. 

In the same room at the Bargello are several fine 


specimens of Mino’s work in low relief. The Bust 


110 ITALIAN: SCURPTUR: 


of a Woman is remarkable for the richness of effect 
and of personality obtained from low relief. The face, 
to be sure, although well modelled and with all the 
truth to nature which makes Florentine portraiture of 
the fifteenth century what it is, has more subtlety 
of finish than of modelling. And to the representation 
of the richly embroidered gown and_ the carefully 
arranged hair, Mino has devoted much thought, treat- 
ing them as important elements in a composition of 
surfaces. . 

Stronger work in portraiture exists in connection 
with the tombs of the Badia by which he is perhaps 
most fairly to be estimated, although in the decorative 
parts there is a certain monotony, a repetition of motives 
which makes the remembrance of Mino easy and yet 


which becomes a tiresome reminder in his poorer work. 


THE BronzE WorKERS 


The difference in the vigor and realism of the con- 
temporary bronzes when compared with the rather 
languid sweetness of the marbles is not fully accounted 
for by the explanation that the workers in bronze, 
Verrocchio and the Pollajuoli for instance, were of 
that energetic temperament which finds its interest in 
the harder problems of that material and of naturalism, 
in distinction from temperaments such as Mino’s, which, 


with the classic sense of restraint strong upon it, is 


MINOR SCULPTORS III 


content to limit its field to a small cycle of sentiments. 
That difference is further explained by the fact that 
each material has peculiar possibilities of appeal,—a 
fact too often lost sight of since the Renaissance when 
the masters had a comprehension and mastery of the 
effects proper to each. With the marble workers it 1s 
as if the translucent material itself lured them into a 
technique and even into a conception of their subjects 
especially fitted to bring out the surface possibilities of 
their material. The surface effects to be obtained in 
bronze are different, and in comparison meagre. The 
effects of gilding and of patina are at the mercy of time. 
Such effect as is gained by decorative detail is that of 
clarity of design and silhouette. Finally, as regards the 
figure, that field of achievement in bronze which only 
the masters are able to conquer, the essential appeal, 
is that of structure and action, of bones and muscles, 
and therefore, while in good work the invigorating 
quality is direct and delightful, in weak work there is 
little opportunity to balance defects of ‘structure and 
action by clever treatment of flesh, skin, and drapery. 
The contours of superfluous flesh, any effect of soft- 
ness of surface, is not pleasant in bronze. Sagging 
cheeks and double chins, which in marble are not 
unpleasant as values in the light and shade scheme 
of a portrait bust, appear in bronze as petrified de- 


formities. 


II2 ITALIAN SCUDPRPURE 


Andrea del Verrocchio, 1435-1488 


Bearing in mind then that bronze as an_ artistic 
material seconds the sculptor in representing the bony 
structure of the human figure bound together as it is 
and moved by its covering muscles, a representation 
in art which we enjoy because it suggests sensations 
of body which are among the most direct of which 
we are conscious, we are much better equipped for 
the enjoyment of such a bronze as Verrocchio’s David 
than are critics whose faint praise includes such state- 
ments as this of Symonds: “As a faithful portrait of 
the first Florentine prentice who came to hand, this 
statue might have merit but for the awkward cuirass 
and kilt that partly drape the figure,” or this of Scott: 
“Scriptural tradition is defied by his being represented 
in a corselet; and the left hand resting on the hip 
gives a flippant attitude, very much at variance with 
the subject.” This offending corselet, which adds to 
the sin of awkwardness a defiance of “scriptural tradi- 
tion,” is, nevertheless, very well in accord with artistic 
tradition which sanctions the use of drapery for its 
contrast with the nude, a contrast made in this case 
by the chased borders and ornamental work of the 
slight armor, which serves also another artistic merit 
in that it rather emphasizes than conceals the action 
of the torso. That the action of the hip can be so 


VERROCCHIO 
DAVID 


Bargello, Florence 


MINOR SCULPTORS 113 


clearly understood under the “kilt,” gives even that 
awkward garment an artistic value. The “ flippant ” 
attitude of the left hand may be forgotten in noting 
its perfect modelling. The right hand grasps the 
sword with a force that seems really to extend through 
the muscles of the forearm, and although “the arms 
are the lean, veined arms of a stone-hewer or gold- 
beater,” the slender well-knit legs have in their easy 
action all the grace possible to youth. The giant’s 
head in collapse at the boy’s feet is, despite its techni- 
cal merit, the most unpleasantly realistic note in the 
whole, since it fails to stir the imagination. Phat 
- power is monopolized by the head of the David, whose 
face is the first appearance in art of that type of potent 
suggestion which Verrocchio first dreamed, and which 
later haunts the works of his pupils, Leonardo and 
Lorenzo di Credi. The fascination of its enigmatical 
expression is alone able to hold one before the statue 
for more than a passing glance. 

And when one is also so fortunate as to be able 
to feel the pleasure that comes from seeing the com- 
mon from an uncommon standpoint, a form of 
zesthetic appeal which has been since the Dutch mas- 
ters the very backbone of a school of painting, and 
when one can therefore obtain from the artist's repre- 
sentation, from his synthesis and emphasis, an enjoy- 


ment which the natural object represented would 


I 


114 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


utterly fail to stimulate, he will find himself consider- 
ing this small bronze David to be one of the most 
charming statues of the Renaissance, and quite suf- 
ficient to prove Verrocchio a bronze master of the 
first order without even the witness of that famous 
equestrian statue in Venice which will be noticed later. 


Antonio Pollajuolo, 1429-14098 


As Verrocchio, his contemporary Pollajuolo was 
worker in metals, painter, and sculptor, and devoted 
to the scientific side of art, but unlike Verrocchio his 
eagerness to extend the realistic powers of sculpture 
was not accompanied by a keen sense for the beauti- 
ful as existent in the actual. 

His two masterpieces, the tombs of Innocent VIII 
and of Sixtus IV, in St. Peter’s, at Rome, are both 
badly lighted and unfortunately placed. The details 
are practically inaccessible to the eye, and the general 
impression produced is more one of admiration for the 
sculptor, who in an epoch of shallow carving could 
plan such ensembles and so successfully cast both 
figures and reliefs, than of pleasure in the contemplation 
of the works themselves. The few pieces of the Bargello 
afford one a better idea of the qualities of vigor and 
boldness present in Pollajuolo’s characteristic style. 
The terra-cotta Bust of a Young Warrior is most 
attractive in its portrayal of youthful fire and pride. 


MINOR SCULPTORS 115 


The little bronze of Hercules strangling Cacus, while 
too harshly realistic and scientific to be wholly pleas- 
ant, is interesting as typical of that strenuous and 
bold endeavor after accuracy in representation which 
relates the minor bronzists to the great masters of 
the Early Renaissance, and makes clear in what man- 
ner the fifteenth century built a foundation upon which 
rests that facility of representation which marks the 
century to follow, makes of it another epoch, to which 
is given the title of the “ Late’ Renaissance.” 


RA 


THE LATE RENAISSANCE 


Jen AM Com Bed ed Rae 


Pee eGHARACTERISTICS OF THE LATE 
RENAISSANCE 


ora aN ma BS Nea 


THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LATE RENAISSANCE 


(1500-1600) 


Tue use by historians of the qualifying adjectives 
“Early” and “Late” to designate Renaissance art of 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively indi- 
cates not only a recognized progression in time, with 
its inevitable difference in product, but it implies as 
well a recognition of the presence, in the art activity 
of the Renaissance, of processes of growth, culmination, 
and decay, similar to those so often traced in the 
regions of its literature and politics. 

The linking together, however, of manifestations of 
artistic power into a progressive series is a delicate 
and difficult task. For the work of art is double- 
faced: it presents itself to us objectively as expression 
and subjectively as impression, and, while it has its 
place as factor in a progression in the growth of 
power to represent, it is also typical of one stage in 
the growth of the power to please, and, as with the 
parts of a reversible puzzle, each piece has its differ- 


119 


120 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


ent function in two designs, and each face its fixed 
place in one design. If we choose to follow on the 
fabric of Renaissance art the pattern woven also into 
literature and politics, we must look at it from only 
one side, must find which aspect of the works of art 
under consideration, the objective or the subjective, 
will illustrate our preconception of development. 

That, on the subjective side, we shall not be able to 
trace successive stages of growth, of culmination, and 
of decay in esthetic appeal requires no demonstration, 
since esthetic values vary with the individual and with 
the age. There will always be temperaments which 
gain more pleasure from Ghiberti’s suavity than from 
Michelangelo's ¢errzézlz¢ta, and which in imagined sen- 
sation find the rude uncertain force of Della Quercia’s 
Adam more stimulating than the perfect muscular 
adjustment of the famous Mercury, and such ages 
as our own, which, with its craving for the vague, 
finds in the very incompleteness of undeveloped tech- 
nique a stimulus more pleasant than is the satisfaction 
in adequate expression of idea, and which rather pre- 
fers to expand in imagination the suggestions of a 
Mino than to rest in the achieved sweetness of a 
Raphael or a Sansovino. Obviously then it is not 
the power to please, which, in Renaissance sculpture, 
can be followed in orderly growth from blade to fruit, 


and through ripening to decay. 


CHARACTERISTICS 121 


Our purpose, rather, is to trace the development of a 
power which is under no circumstances to be confused 
with the power to please by one who values his esthetic 
salvation and which has its logical plan of progression, 
namely, the power to represent. That is, it is the 
development of the power to put before us accurately 
and correctly such facts and relations of form as express 
to us recognizable conceptions whose course may be 
symbolized by a line which rises steadily to its climax 
to descend again, and which, in its comparatively short 
extent, is so remarkably inclusive of the successive 
moments in the evolution of man’s power to represent 
form that it affords a concrete instance of the working 
of general laws. For, in general, the power to repre- 
sent form has its logical development in the race as 
in the individual. Both the child and the savage are 
strangely enough content with the abstract symbol 
which represents the idea of form to the mind rather 
than the form itself to the eye. Advance over the 
symbol comes, in the experience of the student of 
to-day who follows a beaten track as in the experience 
of the many individuals of past ages who opened out 
that track, by the gradual mastery of nature’s combi- 
nations as presented to the eye in separate instances, and 
results naturally in an art of crude naturalism in which 
the actual model is reproduced with as much slavish 


exactness as skill of hand permits, unsynthesized, and 


122 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


without showing conscious emphasis upon this part 
or that. Mastery of the laws of nature’s combinations 
follows, and, whether a conscious working possession 
or not, its acquirement, as individual or racial attain- 
ment, both precedes the power to see and to represent 
the significant in the special model, and is a necessary 
concomitant of the highest degree of power, the ability 
to create the ideally significant form. 

Along such general lines of evolution of technical 
power will the sculpture of any period proceed, making 
such deflections as the forces of its environment direct, 
and to such a course did the advance of Renaissance 
sculpture conform, displaying a swiftness in its move- 
ment, a luxuriance in its growth, and a variety in its 
product due without doubt to the vigor of those two 
influences which have before been mentioned as the 
shaping agents in the art activity of the period, that 
is, to the enthusiasm for nature and the enthusiasm 
for antiquity. Casting aside Byzantine symbolism, 
sculpture in the hands of Niccola Pisano replaced the 
conventional symbols of form by actual imitation of 
forms, guided in its choice of copy by Niccola’s pre- 
dilection for the antique, and passing by the aid of 
Giovanni to the study of the living model. The imi- 
tation of nature thus inaugurated does not develop 
into a crude naturalism as it might have done had 


the enthusiasm for antiguitv not been coexistent with 


CHARACTERISTICS 123 


the enthusiasm for nature. Instead of such result, 
there is, throughout the entire first century of the 
Renaissance, an action and reaction of the two influ- 
ences upon each other which greatly accelerates intel- 
ligent and correct representation. From the study of 
anatomy and from the observation of the living model, 
the sculptor learns facts of structure and of action, 
while his tendency to imitate the individual and often 
ugly proportions of his model is checked by his appre- 
ciation of the greater harmony of classic proportions 
as seen in the few antique statues that he knows, and 
there is formed, therefore, the habit of selecting and 
of modifying parts as a means of obtaining the great- 
est harmony that the actual permits. There is reached 
then, in the works of the Early Renaissance, that state 
in the representation of objects wherein it appears 
that the sculptor has learned to present a synthesis of 
the significant and beautiful as found within the limits 
of the actual; while in the works of the masters, al- 
though seen less characteristically in Donatello than in 
Ghiberti and in Luca, appears a care to select ideal 
proportions, a care which becomes the special problem 
of the masters of the next century. For its solution 
there is at hand aid too importunate to be overlooked. 
Lorenzo de’ Medici has opened his garden gallery of 
antiques. On every side there are growing collections 


of classic art and discussion of its canons. Instead 


124 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


then of passing through an experimental period in 
seeking for the general laws of a pleasant artistic propor- 
tion, the sculptor adopts those which he can deduce 
from his classic model, and which have not only the 
authority of the scholars, but have also the sanction 
of his own half-Latin senses. And it is by reason of 
his clever amalgamation of the facts of classic propor- 
tion and method with the facts accumulated by the 
study of nature, that the sculpture of the early six- 
teenth century differs so widely from that of the fif- 
teenth, and that nudes such, for instance, as Donatello’s 
David and Giovanni da Bologna’s Mercury, could 
never change places with each other chronologically. 
Having mastered both nature’s laws of structure and 
action, and the classic laws of proportion and_ pose, 
those masters of the Late Renaissance before Michel- 
angelo and those later men who are unswerved by his 
influence show themselves desirous and able to create 
figures which unite with the living quality of forms 
imitated from the individual the harmony of propor- 
tion found in the scale of parts adopted from the clas- 
sic. Had the genius of Michelangelo not upburst into 
sculpture, there might have been from this point a 
gradual development of a type wholly national, but in 
Michelangelo are achieved the results of generations 
of ordinary striving. His genius leaps to that culmi- 
nating point in the representation of form where it is 


CHARACTERISTICS 125 


possible to create figures of the highest expressive 
value, which are ideal in proportion and even in struc- 
ture, and which, without breaking nature’s laws, extend 
them to combinations which are not nature’s, but are 
the creations of the sculptor. 

In Michelangelo, the enthusiasm for nature and the 
enthusiasm for antiquity which had combined to shape 
Tuscan art are fused to feed the flame of his gentus, 
and appear no longer as living forces in sculpture. 
Enthusiasm for Michelangelo takes their place, and 
decay in the representation of form is rapid. The 
art of relief is quite lost, and in statue-making, the 
mannerists of the last years of the sixteenth century 
no longer study for themselves either nature or the 
antique, and in their ignorance of underlying law are 
as incapable of putting together coherently the facts 
that they copy from Michelangelo as is a child, too 
young to speak his own tongue, of forming into words 
the letters of a foreign alphabet. 

While as a direct influence in representation, the 
enthusiasm for the classic cannot be traced in the 
sculpture of the Late Renaissance after rmitation of 
Michelangelo set in, yet as an indirect influence in 
determining the subject and the spirit of conception, 
it has supreme sway from the beginning of the cen- 
tury until far past its close. The formal subjects of 


a period are naturally, in greater or less degree, deter- 


126 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


mined by art patronage, and, historians affirm, are illus- 
trative of the mental fashions of their times. The 
classical, mythological, and allegorical figures of Late 
Renaissance sculpture are meant to body forth in 
visible substance the characters with which devotion 
to the Latin authors has peopled the popular mind. 
Whether its patrons be princes, citizens, or ecclesiastics, 
whether its destination be church, or public piazza, or 
private palace, it must meet the demand for classic 
or allegorical subject. Given, in the names that this 
sculpture bears, its formal subjects, shall we find them 
coincident with the direct subjects as apprehended 
through our senses? In the least intelligent produc- 
tions, whatever their titles and the conscious inten- 
tion of the sculptor, the senses feel the direct subject 
to be a discordant jumble of echoes, and the mind 
defines it as an inarticulate mumbling of classic ideas. 
In the best work, however, the rapport between 
the classic formal subject and the direct subject is 
within a certain limit perfect. For, so far as the 
direct subject is an expression of an unspiritualized 
joy in the natural ‘life of the senses, it is an expres- 
sion of an element that had its prominent place in 
the Latin ideal, and the figures created, as “ genial 
seed-bearing vessels of nature,” are true to the concep- 
tions of both epochs. For the richest and fullest 


expression in Renaissance art of this pagan feeling, 


CHARACTERISTICS 127 


an expression struck out when Renaissance and Latin 
paganism were most truly identical, one must go to 
Venetian painting, to find there the splendid portrayal 
of “the lust of the eye and the pride of life.” Yet in 
some of its aspects it is not inadequately treated in 
sculpture, and indeed is the theme of the best work 
accomplished by the Late Renaissance sculptors, ex- 
cepting of course Michelangelo, and in fact 1s what 
the sculpture of the period expresses to us when it 
is sufficiently coherent to express anything. It gives 
its charm to the great output of decorative sculpture. 
It animates a whole host of satyrs, and nymphs, and 
grotesque godlings, who ornament palaces and squares, 
and dwell in fountains and gardens. 

Because circumstances imposed the classical subject 
upon the sculptors of this period, and because, despite 
a knowledge of the ideals and practices of the ancients, 
they were unable to reproduce them ineart,eexcept.as 
some residue of their composing elements survived and 
existed in the racial temperament, there was fostered a 
spirit which left its traces on the sculpture of the times, 
and detracts from its zsthetic value. 

For the sculptor works no longer in_ that free 
spirit of youth, which, raising the altar of its devotion 
to the unknown beauty, accepts what thrills its senses 
in the world about as revelation of that beauty, as a 


fragment of a beautiful whole believed in if not yet 


128 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


seen in its wholeness, and worthy his attention and imi- 
tation. With maturity has come the comprehension of 
the discovered standards of classic beauty. He is by 
nature, as a lineal descendant from the Latins, dis- 
posed to find those standards adequate. Moreover, he 
is forced to conform to them by the pressure of the 
culture of his day, which accepts them as authorita- 
tive, and he is no longer free, nor has the wish, to 
express empirical knowledge of the beautiful, except 
such as is in accord with the accepted standard. 
Therefore it comes to pass that he is filled, not with 
the desire of beauty, but with the desire of classic 
beauty. In contrast with the intellectuality and sen- 
sibility of the Early Renaissance, it seems as if the 
Late Renaissance did not think, it merely adapted 
thought; it did not feel, it appropriated the masks of 
classic feeling. And hence there is an element of 
insincerity and of self-consciousness in much of the work 
of this period which diminishes its zsthetic appeal, 
since we feel that the sculptor is straining to conform 
to a standard that he but dimly understands. More- 
over, since personal preference is barred out in the 
creation of types of general beauty, there is an absence 
of that naive self-revelation which, as the suggestive 
quality in fifteenth-century sculpture, made it possible 
for us to share in individual visions. Yet, when he 


is master of his idea, his technical ability enables him 


CHARACTERISTICS 129 


to express it with a clearness and exactness truly 
sculpturesque. When genuine feeling swallows self- 
consciousness, and he dares to express himself, his 
work is conceived with a boldness and a joy which 
give to it, whatever its subject, a high esthetic value 
‘in and for itself; and which, whatever its shortcomings 
as an interpretation of classic subject, endows it with 
more merit as the zsthetic expression of at least one 
aspect of the Latin ideal than has often been recog- 
nized, although one might think that the present gen- 
eration, so eager in its wish to restore to physical life 
its lost dignity, would be more responsive to the appeal. 

And yet we happen to be somewhat unfortunately 
placed for the appreciation of this comparatively small 
part of the body of historical sculpture, for several 
circumstances have prevented us from giving it that 
degree of attention which is necessary for vivid sensa- 
tion. For our inheritance of “classic” sculpture, rang- 
ing from the early Greek to the latest “revival,” is 
appallingly large. Nor is it to be ‘expected that our 
eyes, opened as they have been to the glories of the 
fifth-century Greek sculpture, should look upon these 
few classically inspired statues of the Renaissance, in 
so far as they are meant to be interpretations of antiq- 
uity, as other than empty husks, which hold never a 
kernel. 

Although we are afar off from the Hellenic.tempera- 


K 


130 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


ment, and have to our prophets, instead of a Winckle- 
mann, a Lessing, a Goethe, a Keats, who without see- 
ing have divined the Greek ideal, archeologists who 
give us facts and fragments, yet because, owing to 
their labors, our eyes have seen the actual work of 
Phidias, we have felt in fuller measure than any pre- 
vious century the physical and _ spiritual exaltation of 
the Greek conceptions as made corporeal in sculpture. 
It is not then to the Renaissance but to the Greek 
that we go if we seek the refreshment of the antique 
ideal. As regards the great mass of Roman art, which 
is to the Greek the coarsened and inadequate rendering 
of a poet’s discourse by the man in the street, we of 
necessity discriminate, prizing much of it as hints of 
Greek originals, broken reflections of what has been 
lost to sight, and finding it not the least wearisome, 
paradoxically enough, when it is least Greek, when it 
shows itself most blind to the subtlety of Greek pro- 
portions and is perhaps vulgar, but alive and Roman. 
Now the pseudo-classic sculpture of the eighteenth 
century neither voices the real passions of its day nor 
echoes the beauty of lost antiques, and therefore is it 
a burden on our eyelids. Cold, academic, meaning- 
less except to the historian and the pedant, it truly 
encumbers the earth; and even in Italy itself it suf- 
focates with its presence sculpture, which, generated it 
would superficially seem, by the same standards of form, 


CHARACTERISTICS 131 


yet had the advantage to be born alive, with the life 
current of its own times to make it individual and 
real, if not classic. 

Could we purge our eyes of their memories and 
look upon Sansovino’s Bacchus or upon the flying 
Mercury as did the Florentines who saw them first, we 
should no doubt respond with an excitement and sur- 
prise as keen as theirs to the novel appeal of unexag- 
gerated action and structure so clearly felt from the 
nude, and seeming to at last give form to the dreams 
of study. 

Moreover, not only does the accumulation of sculp- 
ture patterned after the classic make us inattentive to 
the Late Renaissance sculpture as one interpretation 
more, but we are prevented from fully appreciating 
the intrinsic esthetic value which its figures pos- 
sess as artistic creations by the peculiar bias of the 
modern temperament. The temperament of the six- 
teenth century with its absorption and delight in the 
representation of wz beau corps nu found in them 
a representation of form by far the most satisfactory 
and stimulating that it had seen, and found there, too, 
the illustration of its fondest ideal of man as a being 
free, dignified, self-sufficient for the world that he lives 
in. Qualities of order, of balance, and of sanity, so 
new to him in art, are to us the catalogued beauties 


of an old enthusiasm. They leave our imagination 


132 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


unstirred. Half living as we can through the means 
that science and history have given us, a_ hundred 
different lives of the imagination, we are most easily 
thrilled in art by that which suggests rather than 
defines, which, instead of confining us to a definite 
feeling, a recognizable and therefore limited sensation, 
sets fire to trains of fancy and starts the nerves into 
a vague quiver which promises, if it does not provide, 
rare sensations. | 

In short, the greatest fault to be found with this 
sculpture as a whole, excepting of course with the 
work of Michelangelo, is that for us, from an esthetic 
point of view, it is completely lacking in that “charm,” 
for which our appetite is omnivorous. It is true that its 
mastery of technique enables it to express its thought 
fully and clearly. But we are not at all moved by that 
thought. And moreover its greatest merit sculpturally, 
its restraint and its scrupulous rejection of extraneous 
matter, is for us a demerit since it lessens our chance 
of zsthetic enjoyment as we can find no avenues of 
escape into associated fields of our own imagining. 
Finally, we may be sensitive to its aesthetic appeal 
and obtain the esthetic pleasure that it can give, if, 
non-expectant of participation through imagined sen- 
sation in the Greek life of poetically conceived sensa- 
tion, we can key ourselves to joy in the exuberance 


of unsated, unmoralized sense life, and, resigning the 


CHARACTERISTICS 133 


dear delights of diffusive emotion induced by promises 
of sensations, are content to identify ourselves with 
simple action and submerge ourselves in one state of 
sensation. 

It is plain enough that the sculpture of Michel- 
angelo carries us into realms of feeling and thought 
which are immeasurably distant from the confines of 
the limited mood which is typical of the Late Renais- 
sance when not under his spell. The zsthetic appeal 
of his creations will be considered later. His con- 
temporaries, with the exceptions of Cellini and of Gio- 
vanni da Bologna, were dazzled by his genius, and the 
works of the masters who had preceded him came to 
be noticed no more than are the stars after the sun 
has risen. They have failed also to have any apprecia- 
ble effect upon the style of modern sculpture, which, 
susceptible to the charm of the Early Renaissance and 
studious of the methods of Michelangelo, has found 
little to attract it in the period between. That period 
created no new things in sculpture, and is to be valued 
historically for its excellent technique, and as the last 
sincere expression in sculpture of unashamed, unphi- 


losophized absorption in the sensuous life. 


“ 


THE SANSOVINI 


tess 


* et ee 


SAP Tek Th. 
THE SANSOVINI 
Andrea Sansovino, 1460-1529 


STANDING between those chronological groups of 
works of art, which, because of marked common char- 
acteristics, are said to constitute a “period,” there are 
always to be found so-called “transitional” works 
which bear on their surface reflections of the period 
which disappears, and foregleams of that which comes. 
As both postlude and prelude, such work is the especial 
delight of the scientific art critic whose business lies 
with the construing of resemblances into relations. 
Outside of its interest, however, unless the union of 
new and old is unusually piquant, transitional work 
has not the esthetic value possessed by the repre- 
sentative work of a period. It is apt to be reminiscent 
without spontaneity, and tentative without conviction. 
~ While in Andrea Sansovino, in whom is_ traceable 
the transition from the Early to the Late Renaissance 
ideal of form, there is not the originality and energy 

137 


138 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


of artistic power to make for piquancy of effect, there 
is on the other hand a natural disposition toward an 
ordered and general beauty which gives him firm hold 
upon the classic manner. In his early works he joins 
hands, loosely enough, with the  fifteenth-century 
Florentines; but in his last works he is at one with 
the sixteenth century in spirit and type. He is clearly 
transitional in the great tombs of Santa Maria del 
Popolo in Rome, the masterpieces of his maturity, 
and invites comparison of the manner of the two 
periods, since there he is treating an old object of 
the Early Renaissance, namely, the architectural sculp- 
tural monument, in the new manner of the sixteenth 
century. 

It is unfortunate for the purposes of comparison that 
there are not in Santa Maria del Popolo any typical 
Early tombs. Passing down the church, one notes 
some of Mino’s stupidest, most barren work, and has 
thrust upon one’s notice Bernini’s restless saints, all 
of a frozen flutter in the nave, and finally comes to 
Sansovino’s tombs enclosed in the choir behind the 
high altar, in the mood to feel that they are stately 
monuments of a well-ordered elegance. One’s feeling 
of satisfaction, however, is but too short-lived, for the 
tombs themselves revive memories of the tombs of the 
early men, of Desiderio and Civitali, and Rossellino; 


and such memories convince us that we shall not get 


ANDREA SANSOVINO 
TOMB CARDINAL SFORZA 
S. Maria del Popolo, Rome 


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THE SANSOVINI 139 


an equal pleasure here. Analysis of the effects of the 
parts brings out the reasons for the emptiness of the 
whole impression. The arched recess, that principal 
feature in the plan of the Early Renaissance tomb, 
has been expanded here into a petite facade, broken 
with projections and recesses, holding free statues in 
its niches, and covered with a veil of fine ornament. 
The monument is, architecturally, put together with 
good taste in the use of classic members and mould- 
ings, but with an absence of focus. This defect, more- 
over, is in no degree mitigated by the distribution of 
the ornament, which, while in itself of much beauty 
of design, is ineffectual in its application since it 
does not emphasize the structure, nor serve to give 
calculated values in the light and shade scheme of the 
whole composition. Evidently the sculptor has not 
had in mind the old idea of the construction of a 
frame properly subordinated in structural and decora- 
tive effect to the central sarcophagus. Indeed, the 
effigy of the dead and the roundel of the Madonna, 
upon which were once concentrated the attention, are 
here but pale gleams from the past, and are quite 
lost to notice in the glory of the niched figures, which, 
from the care bestowed upon them and the prominence 
given them, are surely the foci of the monuments. 
They are unequivocally of the Late Renaissance in 


type, and no doubt their ease of pose and their ampli- 


140 ITALIAN SCULPIVRE 


tude of proportion, as well as their grace of drapery 
and regularity of feature, gave much real esthetic 
pleasure to their day. But they exert over us no 
spell of the novel, and, lacking in our eyes both the 
subtlety and the intellectual content of the antique, 
lacking also the suggestiveness of the individual, their 
“catalogued beauties” fail to charm. 

The figure of Prudence on the fompesonmee 
Cardinal Sforza is sometimes said to be one of the 
most beautiful figures of the Renaissance. The eye 
acknowledges the excellence of the representation of 
an evenly developed female type, but counts its 
esthetic appeal as nil beside the feeling induced by 
Della Quercia’s_ incorrect but stimulating nudes, 
Duccio’s figures, unsubstantial but alluringly draped, or 
even beside the charm of Mino’s curving eyelids. 
Identify yourself with it, there is nothing represented 
in its action, or in its character, or in its physical 
life to give higher quality to your moments. 

None of the figures has any connection with the 
others as a member of a group, nor with the sepul- 
chral figure which itself is not, either in sentiment or 
in composition, the keynote of such an elegy in stone 
as Rossellino and Desiderio could compose. Misled, 
perhaps by a desire for novelty, in the treatment of the 
sepulchral figure Andrea has achieved signally unhappy 


results. Abandoning the traditional outstretched pos- 


ANDREA SANSOVINO 
DETAIL “ PRUDENCE” 
Tomb Cardinal Sforza 


THE SANSOVINI 14! 


ture, he has here represented the figures as half reclin- 
ing, leaning on their elbows and with their legs crossed, 
yet with neither the decent composure of the dead 
7 so that the hybrid 
attitude is, physically, most painful to the spectator, 


nor the animation of the living, 
while it drives from his mind those sentiments wont 
to hover near the thought of death, and which are 
so easily respondent to any poetic treatment of the 


theme. 


Jacopo Sansovino, 1477-1570 


In emphasizing in Andrea Sansovino a lack of 
poetical sentiment as typical of the sixteenth century 
in comparison with the fifteenth, there comes, to qualify 
any too sweeping a generalization, the thought of An- 
drea’s closest pupil, that Jacopo Tatti called Sansovino 
from his master, the body of whose production, to be 
sure, goes to swell the great pazan on the splendid 
joys of living which Venice gave the last years of the 
century, yet who, before he went to Venice, made in 
Florence a statue of Bacchus which is a_ perfectly 
rounded stanza of the “poetry of earth” which “is 
never dead.” 

The Bacchus is a statue, under life size, of slightly 
yellowed marble, showing little morbzdezza in the 
treatment of its surface and little detail in the model- 


ling. There is no distinction in the forms except in 


142 ITALIAN SCULPIUKE 


those of the face. The balance of the members and 
their proportions are evidently inspired by the classic, 
yet the whole figure moves with the living rhythm of 
an individual. Indeed, so real is its communication of 
movement, that it is almost possible in imagined sen- 
sation to feel in oneself that smooth muscular adjust- 
ment which we call perfect grace. What pleasure, as 
of embodying in muscular movement a cadence of 
music, to sway forward with the weight on one side, 
while at the same time the leg muscles on the- other 
side gently straighten, and the balancing arm circles 
upward toward the lifted head! Sansovino has repre-— 
sented the pleasantest moment of that action, the mo- 
ment that holds in itself the inevitable suggestion of 
the muscular sensations that preceded it, and even sug- 
gests, in the expectant joy written on the face, the sen- 
sations to follow as the polished cup shall touch the 
lips and the wine flood the sense with gracious warmth. 
And to such imagined sensation the mind is quick to 
fit a concept of the “pure joys of living.” So long as 
we can dwell with pleasure on that idea, and so long 
as in imagination we can submerge our physical feel- 
ing in the life current which pulses in the Bacchus, 
so long will the statue hold us. For its esthetic ap- 
peal lies in its power to give us that thought and that 
feeling, and it is not adulterated nor even perceptibly 


extended by associative values, either mythological or 


JACOPO SANSOVINO 
BACCHUS 


Bargello, Florence 


he py et Cr le en et ee EE em ee a TS a ns ett eR my! wa ae ee een ele! a ie tiie eared whl ae 


THE SANSOVINI 143 


historical. As an interpretation of its subject, it is 
sincere because it is no echo of ancient feeling, but is 
the embodiment of the temperate Italian’s enjoyment 
of good wine, and of his happiness in his vineyards. 
This young god is not Greek nor Roman, but pure 
Tuscan, the concentration into concrete, tangible vision 
of what is rendered to the senses in a Tuscan vine- 
yard, a being who incorporates into leaf-crowned form 
the grace of the festooned vines, and seemingly into 
his structure that very sweetness and warmth of sun 
and soil which swells the purple grapes with nectar, 
One xuance he is of the Greek Dionysos, but only a 
flash, as it were, of that prismatic religious concept, of 
that cult to which each early people of Greece added 
its local color, until, poetized and philosophized, it held 
in any one of its symbols the recognition of the life 
generated from the earth by sun and dew, and of the 
essential oneness of such phenomena with the less 
clearly discerned changes in man’s state as body and 
soul. Yet the suggestion here for such associative 
idea is of the slightest. And there is no hint of the 
Roman patron of orgy. His only attendant is a baby 
Pan. It is later, in Venetian painting, that the Bacchus 
of Latin poetry appears, and brings with him all his 
train of revellers. The Bacchus of Sansovino is, after 
all, less classic in matter than in manner, for it is not 


the interpretation of a Greek or a Roman myth, but is 


144 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


actual myth-making from. home-grown stuff, and it pre- 
sents a nature incarnation with a clearness of outline 
and an exclusiveness of association which is truly 
sculptural and creates for the spectator a concrete 


sensation and emotion. 


PotAR TER Tl | 


IOVANNI DA BOLOGNA __ 


— . x * 


ng 


ere ir Roel | 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA 


(1530-1608) 


THE power to think sculpturally, to see a definite 
idea incorporated in a form which is the distillation 
of all those related sensations which make the idea, a 
power which the Greeks possessed in the highest im- 
aginable degree, and which belongs also in generous 
measure to the best sculptors of the Late Renaissance, 
although it is unfortunately exercised on a body of 
shallow ideas, finds no better representative in this 
period than Giovanni da Bologna. Although a con- 
temporary of Michelangelo, he is little affected by the 
latter’s technique, and not at all by his thought, and 
makes his own figures the embodiment of rather obvious 
ideas, which are usually those of physical state and 
action. 

His masterpiece, a thing, as the Italian says, “ #olto 
wngegnosa e rarrisstma, is the bronze Mercury of the 
Bargello. From all the shapes, which, shifting quick- 
silver-like, belong to the Greek Hermes of the many 


epithets, and to the Roman Mercury, god of gain and 
147 


148 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


eloquence, Giovanni has made choice of one, of Hermes 
Diakteros, who is Mercury the messenger of the gods, 
known by his attributes, the petasus and the caduceus 
and the winged feet; and of all the god’s possibilities 
of action, he has chosen the power of swift movement 
through the air. The figure, in fact, sums up for the 
eye the bodily sensations of the ideal runner, adding 
to our realization some indescribable element of enjoy- 
ment such as the eye seizes for us from the flight of a 
bird and the swoop of a yacht. For Giovanni has rep- 
resented that moment, in the rhythm of running, when 
the wave of motion passes from one set of levers to 
the other, and the exhilaration of the effort is at its 
highest. And he has been able to isolate his chosen 
moment by means of his knowledge of anatomy, and 
his skill in the balancing and casting of bronze figures. 
The body as a whole is charged with the idea, and 
the head is made no more expressive than the foot, 
indeed is, as is the pedestal, merely a necessary ter- 
mination. The relation of the arms to the action of 
the legs is perhaps somewhat artificial, too evidently de- 
termined by the idea of conztroposto, and could hardly 
be justified by any instantaneous photograph of the run- 
ning movement; but, seen in silhouette, it adds to the 
impression of forward-upward motion, and the pose as 
a whole is a synthesis of the running movement which 


we readily accept as true. The modelling is suited to 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA 


MERCURY 


Bargello, Florence 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA 149 


both the material and the subject by its clear indica- 
tion of structure and muscles, and by its avoidance of 
any surplusage of flesh. The patina, of a myrtle green 
color, which has formed on the cheek and upper legs, 
is not unpleasing in effect, and is altogether a less re- 
grettable souvenir of the figure’s sojourn in the garden 
of the Villa Medici at Rome than are the scars mark- 
ing where the statue was broken in its careless trans- 
portation to Florence. 

On the old site of the Mercury in the garden of the 
Villa Medici, now occupied by the French Academy, 
there stands a replica with its surface corroded to the 
bright green tint fancied by modern Italians. It is only 
a copy, but, taken in connection with its situation, it 
teaches us how the enjoyment of an object is enhanced 
and prolonged by appropriate surroundings. The Mer- 
cury of the Bargello, confined with scores of other statues 
in the gloomy prison of the ancient state, was created, it 
seems, for the open air and the delightful freedom of a 
garden. His part there 1s played bya replica, but, so 
far as general impression is concerned, with slight loss 
to us. Entering the garden at the side, one passes down 
alleys bordered with box and filled with a pale green 
light which filters through overhanging ilex, and bay, 
and pine, and as one approaches the lawn before the 
villa, one sees there a flash of green flame, the Mercury, 


and perceives on coming nearer that he faces the open- 


150 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


ing of the high terrace, and that space is clear before 
the speed of his feet across gardens and city walls to 
the azure Alban hills and the snow peaks of the 
Apennines. 

Although Giovanni had not always the success in 
fusing subject with material which makes the Mer- 
cury his masterpiece, he is preéminently a bronze mas- 
ter, fond of energetic action, of epigrammatic contours, 
and of all the problems that find their best solution in 
that material. Yet he could work in marble. Indeed, 
it is said that he made the marble group known as 
the Rape of the Sabine, to prove that the fragility 
of the marble was no bar to the force and fashion of 
his skill. He convinced his public. For the science 
displayed in his group was keenly appreciated by his 
times, which it seems found pleasure in discussing 
technique much as it is discussed in the art schools 
of to-day, and so well did he hit off the popular taste, 
its worship in art of wz beau corps nu, its liking 
for stimulating forms, that praises were lavished upon 
him, and the laudatory verses attached, as was then 
the ingenuous custom, to the group itself, were suff- 
cient to make a printed volume. In their prodigious 
effusion of sentiment and superlatives, they seem a 
reproach to the laconic guide-book and the calm critic 
of to-day; but the group, in its solution of technical 


problems, is really rather “art for the artist” than a 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA 
RAPE OF THE SABINES 


Loggia de’ Lanzi, Florence 


acu ee a” eile Jae ea 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA I5f 


satisfaction for the ordinary visitor. And that the 
sculptors have studied it with both pleasure and proht 
is evident from the number of groups, especially in 
France, which have been inspired by it. Yet even 
the unprofessional who give it their attention cannot 
fail to see the skill shown in its balance and in the 
management of projecting members and the knowledge 
of anatomy. The central figure is modelled with the 
most detail. Its action calls into play some of the 
most powerful muscles of the torso, and brings out 
the typical contours of the male for emphatic contrast 
with those of the female figure. In the latter, the 
emphasis is placed upon the softness and roundness 
of flesh, not only as characteristic of the sex, but of the 
period of adolescence as well, for the sculptor’s design 
was to make the group an illustration of the three 
ages, by reproducing the soft contours of youth, the 
muscular development of maturity, and the more angu- 
lar forms of old age. To group the three figures to- 
gether, he makes use of the incident dedicated by 
tradition to the display of the nude, and to the con- 
trast of the male and female figures. Most character- 
istic of the period is the treatment of the figures as 
three types of body, not three characters; so that, 
although his figures live, they seem to be animated by 
instinct, rather than by the passionate intelligence 


belonging only to man. It has been said of the 


152 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


” 


creations of Greek sculpture, that they do not “act, 
they “are.” How far, then, from the Greek are such 
figures as these which do not exist as characters but 
as poses! 

Once the group was set up in the Loggia, it was 
given the specific title, The Rape of the Sabines, after 
much popular discussion. The name matters little to 
us. The savage passion which we associate with the 
legendary episode has no illustration in the balanced 
figures of the group; but in the relief of the pedestal, 
which was made after the naming of the group, and 
which is Giovanni’s best work in relief, there is a 
successful attempt to convey the wildness and_bar- 
barity of the struggle. And the group itself takes 
on, when seen across the piazza, an animation of 
meaning lost on nearer approach, as one sees in the 
shadow of the Loggia the uplifted white arms of the 
struggling woman and the straining shoulders of her 
captor. 

Although Giovanni’s Mercury and his Rape of the 
Sabines demonstrate his ability to handle both bronze 
and marble in the single figure and in the group, and 
place him in the first rank of the sculptors of the 
sixteenth century, he shows himself to be inferior to 
the masters of the fifteenth in the treatment of bas- 
relief, whether we judge him from his best work, the 
relief of the Rape of the Sabines, or from his least 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA 153 


successful, the pedestal of the equestrian statue of 
Cosmo de’ Medici. The bronze doors of the cathedral 
at Pisa, which have been until recently ascribed to 
him, in design at least and partially in execution, are 
shown by recent: research to be in all probability the 
work of another hand. So well, however, do they 
illustrate Giovanni’s shortcomings in the treatment of 
relief, in illustrating the inferiority of the manner of 
his century to the manner of the fifteenth in that 
branch of sculpture, that they may with propriety be 
~ considered here. 

Whoever the sculptor was, he had not the faculty 
of using his plans with that lucidity and effectiveness 
which was attained with so little apparent effort by 
even the minor sculptors of the previous century, and, 
needless to Say, is far from possessing Ghiberti’s power 
to handle the laws of perspective as magic formule 
of enchantment. One may stand before those dusty 
doors in Florence, while every sense registers per- 
sonal discomfort, and gradually becoming oblivious to 
the odors, the dust, and the noise of a city square, 
swarming with the deformities of actuality, be rapt 
away by Ghiberti’s harmonies, as truly as a Keats by 
the song. of a nightingale, to worlds where discord 
has no part. At Pisa one is scarcely so fortunate, 
although here, as is. rarely the case, the surroundings 


of the cathedral attune one to sensitiveness, for. the 


154 ITALIAN SCULPT ORE 


three stately buildings stand in a field of green and 
look over the city wall toward encompassing purple 
hills. The transition to ideal scenes would be easy, 
and one’s fancy needs but a hint to be off. But 
the Pisan gates are ineffectual; they preach no new 
gospel of beauty, cast no spell over eye and imagina- 
tion. They have their value in the general effect of 
the fagade as a space of rich green in a color effect 
of yellow and red and green marble and _ brilliant 
mosaic. The weathering, however, which has given 
them their effective patina, has done its part in oblit- 
erating relief which could never have been very clear. 
The action of time has but increased a fundamental 
confusion of planes and an indistinctness of silhouette, 
which makes the effort to disentangle the design 
fatiguing and irritating to a degree little conducive to 
esthetic enjoyment. 

I have chosen for illustration one the clearest panels, 
the Visit of the Three Kings. Compared in composi- 
tion, in types, in technique, with any of Ghiberti’s panels, 
it has not a large excuse for being. The figure that 
strikes the eye first is that of a naked slave, not of 
the Madonna nor of one of the Three Kings. The 
bounding lines of the figures of the groups are so con- 
fused, and their planes are so wavy, that the eye finds 
it difficult to place any separate figure. The ugly 


crowns arranged to mark successive planes are hardly 


BRONZE GATES 
SIT OF THE MAGI 
Duomo, Pisa 


VI 


(Period of Late Renaissance) 


PANEL OF 


i OO i ie a ke ee ad ie) 


GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA 155 


successful in creating the illusion of distance, and the 
perspective view of that stock feature of the paintings 
of the incident, the retinue of the Kings, is a complete 
failure. Its first spirited figures, however, the horse 
and its advancing sheik, are interesting, and, with the 
nude in the foreground, are most detachable and come 
the nearest to possessing that quality of attraction for 
the inquiring fingers which, felt so strongly in Ghiberti's 
panels, is properly the appeal of goldsmith work. he 
clean firmness of outline, the sign manual of that train- 
ing in the goldsmith’s shop which so influenced the 
technique of the early bronze workers, is wanting to 
the figures, and is an even greater loss to the over- 
heavy border. So overcrowded and so little conven- 
tionalized are the fruits and flowers composing it that 
the design is smothered in the foliage, as are some 
charming small lizards and birds which surely deserved 
a better fate. 

Even although these tiny creatures of the gates 
must, with the reliefs, resign all claim to being the 
creation of Giovanni da Bologna, they are not un- 
worthy to be members of that fantastic company of 
decorative “ grotesques,” of whimsical monsters and 
devils which were made by his hand, which are to be 
met with often in Italy and here and there in the world’s 
museums, and which make us wonder at the produc- 


tiveness of his fancy, and serve to enrich and en- 


156 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


liven our whole concept of the decorative side of 
Renaissance sculpture. And such objects as _ the 
appealing devil of the Via Vecchietta, and the sprightly 
dolphins of the fountain at Bologna so hardly curbed 
by the attendant cupids, not only delight us by their 
inherent blitheness, but come also to be of value to 
us as signs and symbols of times, when, as we fondly 
imagine, objects of daily sight and use were made 


beautiful, and the great artists were also craftsmen. 


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BENVENUTO CELLINI 
(1500-1571) 


THE existence of the choicer things of daily use 
and ornament, such as the work of the smith in pre- 
cious metals, the jewellery, the intaglios, the embroid- 
eries, the objects of ivory and enamel, in short all 
that varied product of the craftsman which makes 
the natural atmosphere for the larger work of the 
artist is, in any state of civilization, of all too short 
a lease. The intrinsic value of their material, their 
fragility, and their portability expose them to  vicissi- 
tudes that few survive, and any epoch must construct 
‘its images of the handiwork of former days from the 
flotsam and jetsam of collections, and from the de- 
scriptions to be found here and there in literature. 
Although the latter aid to the imagination is not to 
be compared with the former, yet, taken in connection 
with some familiarity with the actual objects left us, 
it serves the purpose of rebuilding them and _ their 
like into their places in the structure of former daily 
life. 


159 


160 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


No writings of a period add so many concepts of 
its lost beauties, and better show them in their rela- 
tions to people’s feelings about them, than do the 
treaties and autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, —type 
of the Renaissance braggadocio, man of lusts and lies 
and poetic fancies, true artist always, and the best gold- 
smith of his times. 

Now, although in his narratives of his relations with 
popes, and princes, and kings, Cellini has occasion to 
speak of the antiques that they treasure, and although 
he often describes the productions of his contempora- 
ries if only to dispraise them, his chief concern is 
with the history, and description, and eulogy of his 
own works, all of which matter he sets forth in so 
lively and persuasive a style that the jewelled cups, 
and the salt-cellars, andthe buttons, and the helmets 
of which he discourses and which have, for the most 
part, disappeared from the world of visible objects 
even as have their owners, are almost as clear to our 
mental vision as the images of many objects upon 
which our eyes have looked their fill. And as for the 
comparatively few pieces which are preserved in muse- 
ums, they acquire from Cellini’s words a kind of glamour 
which causes us to give them an unusual degree of 
attention and appreciation. Few can be seen to-day | 
of that host of lovely things that Cellini made during 
his years of industry. A few cups, some medallions, 


BENVENUTO CELLINI 161 


the cover of a Book of Hours, a salt-cellar, —these are 
the best authenticated of many like objects attributed 
to him, and are all that remain to us of the work of 
Cellini as goldsmith. 

Of Cellini, sculptor, we may see the statue that 
earned him the title standing in the Loggia dei Lanzi 
in Florence, where it has stood since Cellini himself 
set it there, swelling with pride as he exhibited it to 
the city, and thinking the plaudits that met his ears 
ample recompense at last for his sorely hindered 
efforts. In looking at the Perseus, nobody who 
remembers Cellini’s vivid account of his labors, and 
of the excitement of its casting, can wholly separate, in 
his impression, what his eyes really bring him from 
what he prepares himself to see.’ Perhaps some faint 
thrill remains, from the memory of Cellini’s narrative 
of its casting, of that scene in the workshop when 
the metal had ceased to flow, and Cellini, risen from 
a bed of fever, rushes in to save his precious statue, 
hurls blows and curses and orders at his frightened 
men, and finally, to fill the mould, casts into the cal- 
dron all his three hundred pieces of household pewter. 
Or perhaps there seems to still linger for sensitive 
ears a thin reverberation of the praises which the 
piazza echoed hundreds of years ago. However, count- 
ing out such factors of impression, the statue easily 


appeals to one as being far ahead of the other sculpture 


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162 ITALIAN -SCULPTURE 


of this time, except of course Michelangelo's, in being 
a sincere expression of personality. That it attempts 
to conform to no classic model is evident enough from 
the realistic detail of the result of decapitation. The 
classic principle of the balance of members is followed. 
As to the rather unsatisfactory proportions of the body, 
the long torso, and the thick legs, it is probable that 
they are not the result of a rejection of the classic, 
but followed the enlarging of the small model. Com- 
parison of the statue with the first wax model of the 
Bargello, which is so much happier in its proportions, 
would seem to prove this supposition. This small 
figure, made on the scale which best suited Cellini’s 
hand, has a sort of lightness of figure, and a debonair 
grace which is most attractive. The same qualities 
‘are so diluted in the bronze statue as to be hardly 
recognizable, and yet they are, I think, at the bottom 
of the pleasant impression. 

Another indication that the maker of the Perseus 
was goldsmith rather than sculptor is the careful and 
complex treatment of certain details, the ordered intri- 
cacy of the snakes of the Medusa’s head, for instance, 
and the elaborate helmet, a consummation in metal of 
such a design as, when one looks at the drawings in 
the Uffizi left by Cellini of fantastic helmets crowded 
with strange animals and figures, seems only possible on 
paper. The fancy and hand of the goldsmith is above 


CELLINI 


PERSEUS 


Loggia de’ Lanzi, Florence 


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BENVENUTO CELLINI 163 


all obvious in the ornate pedestal. The latter is too 
narrow for its statue, and is weakened by over-orna- 
mentation. The four statuettes of its niches are classic 
in name, and are quite in the conventional manner of 
the day. The various details, masks, rams’ heads, etc., 
are the product of a skilled and original hand, but 
they present no unity of design. 

However much the eye may linger over the rich 
details, the mind does not lose sight of the fact that 
they are but parts of the whole, and an element 
which perhaps increases our enjoyment by giving us 
the feeling that the figure was conceived in the truly 
romantic and not in the pseudo-classic temper. That 
is the reason that, as a visualization of a well-known 
hero, it is satisfactory. Yet if one has no wish to 
replace his own image of Perseus and of the Gorgon’s 
head by Cellini’s, he can gain some pleasure from a 
representation of youth and strength seen at the 


moment of the accomplishment of an action. 


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(1475-1564) 


Tue artistic power of genius itself is not born 
Minerva-like. Mature as it shows itself to be even in 
its earliest works in its independence and assurance, it 
has yet had its period, however brief, of dependence upon 
and assimilation of the knowledge and the spirit of its 
environment. From the past it inherits, as does the 
smaller talent, but it is quick to make claim to its own, 
and to reinvest. It reveals itself as genius because it 
can select, and assimilate, and transmute, and can then 
put forth results, not processes. 

No artist has seemed more self-directed and self- 
nourished than Michelangelo. Yet he is moved by the 
tendencies of his day, shares in the popular enthusiasm 
for science and for the antique, and is as eager to dis- 
sect dead bodies in the cell at San Spirito as to study 
from Lorenzo’s antiques in the garden of San Marco. 
And, in fact, in all of his early works, in the sculpture 
of what may be called his first manner, that produced 


167 


168 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


before he is summoned to paint the Sistine Chapel, 
he shows that he has reached, by the same processes, 
the same state in the representation of form that is 
attained by the best work of the High Renaissance, 
that is, he has learned to construct his figures accord- 
ing to the laws of nature and the scale of classic pro- 
portions. He likes to display the effects of physical 
exertion in figures of full muscular development and 
over life size. 

But Michelangelo did not remain at this stage of 
development. He outgrew his satisfaction in such an ideal 
of form, and gradually evolved one which better expressed 
him. The first man since the Greeks to comprehend 
the scope and expressive capabilities of the nude in 
art, to see that it may express us to ourselves with a 
directness only paralleled by the power of music, 
he was bound, as he mastered the technique of his 
art and as his nature developed, to put into the lan- 
guage of the nude those unrestrainable thoughts and 
emotions which, while truly his, yet had been and were 
to be, in the evolution of man’s spirit, typical of a view 
of life which had been practically unfelt by the classic 
peoples, and which certainly had not been nor could be 
expressed in the classic ideal of form. Now, if these 
unclassic ideas and emotions were to find expression 
through the language of the nude, there was necessary 


an arrangement of proportions and parts which should 


MICHELANGELO 169 


differ from the classic in order to express the not classic. 
It is in the sculpture of what may be called his second 
manner that Michelangelo arrives at a presentment of 
the nude figure which so differs from classic canons, 
in the treatment of relations and proportions, that it 
expresses thoughts and feelings never before expressed 
in form, and establishes in its turn, as had the Greek 
before it, conventions in the representation of form 
which were often misunderstood by later sculptors, and 
which became in their hands imperfect formulz, mis- 


apprehended and misapplied. 


First PERIOD 


The early work of Michelangelo in sculpture is that 
of a youthful personality directed more by its preferences 
than its passions, and, as is the case with all early work, 
however thorough the artist’s assimilation and striking 
his individuality, it lets us into the secrets of his studies, 
rather than into those of his experiences. There is 
his earliest work, the relief of the Centaurs, to prove 
his use of antique models, and there is the Cupid, 
of which the story goes that after being buried in the 
ground it was sold to a connoisseur as a genuine 
antique, to prove how quickly the lesson of the classic 
manner was learned. And there is the statue of a 
drunken youth, miscalled Bacchus, to show observation 


of nature and close study of the living model. And 


170 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


there is the series of gods, of which the Apollo and 
the Cupid are examples, to indicate, that, although felt 
with an ardor and carried out with a vigor unknown 
to the lesser sculptors, his ideal of form was _practi- 
cally the same as theirs, that is, he wished to repre- 
sent the nude figure on as large a scale as possible, 
he felt the beauty of ample, symmetrical development, 
and the stimulus of vigorous action. Although any 
and every work of this period reveals originality and 
power, it is in the last works, the Pieta and the David, 
that there is evident the most complete transmutation 


of knowledge into creative power. 


The Preta 


The treatment in art of any religious subject such 
as this traditional one of the Pieta tends to become 
symbolical rather than to remain truly illustrative. 
That is, the Pieta is the illustration of an incident, of 
the pity of Mary at the moment when she takes upon 
her knees the dead body of her son; but it tends to 
become more than the portrayal of physical and mental 
suffering, to become a symbol of a sacrifice made for 
the sin of humanity; and therefore, as a so pregnant _ 
religious symbol, it arouses emotions which naturally 
flood back upon, and perhaps somewhat inhibit, the 
purely esthetic consideration of it as a presentment 
of form. This, I think, accounts for the fact that 


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MICHELANGELO 
PIETA 


St. Peter's, Rome 


MICHELANGELO Al 


many writers in treating of Michelangelo's Pieta have 
spoken as if it conveyed to the mind directly and 
forcibly some very definite thoughts as form, which 
seem rather to belong to it as symbol. They find 
that the figure of the Madonna expresses profound 
grief, sanctity, submission, and clairvoyant resignation, 
and they see in the figure of Christ a sacrificed divinity. 
Now, do not these ideas belong to the associative 
appeal of the group? Is not the one idea actually 
apprehended through the senses this, namely, the 
pathetic idea of the support by a living body of a 
helpless dead body? We see that the relation between 
them is of the closest, and the feeling of pathos is 
aroused. That we know from the subject that they 
are mother and son, that we know that they are Mary 
and Christ, makes concrete that pathos, and deepens 
and enriches it by many associations which carry us 
in emotion beyond the actual feeling that the figures 
of themselves have the power of stirring. : 
The figure of Christ is under the size of life but 
well developed, and is carefully modelled and finished. 
The relaxation is so skilfully conveyed that it typifies 
to us that very moment of the cessation of life which 
is not collapse, nor vzgor mortis, but the moment 
when the body becomes dead weight, yet 1s still warm 
and supple. The figure of Mary is proportionately 


larger, and supplies the living support of arm and lap. 


172 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


Identification in imagined sensation with either figure, 
to feel the absence of life or to feel the resting of a 
dead weight upon one for support, is productive of 
deep emotion. In its power to arouse that emotion is 
the great esthetic merit of the group. Details add 
little to the language of the figures. The heads are 
more carefully finished than is usual with Michel- 
angelo, but the faces, in type and expression, are not 
impressive. The composition is most skilful, for the 
two figures are truly united into a group by mass and 
line, so that the whole has the monumental quality of 
a unit, while each figure makes its subordinate appeal. 

Whether we choose, in our enjoyment of the Pieta, 
to emphasize the emotions which as symbol it arouses, 
or which as illustration it defines, they are built upon 
a genuine esthetic appeal, a communication by form 
of the pathetic idea of the relation of the living to 
the dead, which must include, with all sorts and con- 
ditions of men, many emotions that are not always crys- 


tallized into religious incident or personal experience. 


The David 


It is not as a religious symbol, nor for its esthetic 
value, but simply on its merits as an illustration of 
character that the David appeals to nine-tenths of 
the visitors to the Accademia. If they like the 
colossal statue, they like it because of its realism. 


MICHELANGELO 
DAVID 


Accademia, Florence 


MICHELANGELO 173 


“David probably was,” they say, “just such a_half- 
grown boy as Michelangelo has represented him to 
be: huge in build and capable of putting forth 
phenomenal strength in a sudden effort, under the 
impulse of an excited will’ If they dislike it, they 
dislike it because of its lack of idealism. “ How is it 
possible,” they say, “to conceive of this awkward boy- 
giant as playing the part of a hero in the story of 
colossal Might overcome by puny Right? This huge 
creature might easily slay the lion, and the bear, and 
the Philistine, and need oa miraculous aid from 
heaven. The engaging weakness and _ grace and 
dreamy face of the David of Donatello, and of the 
David of Verrocchio, are truer because more poetic 
illustrations of the hero of the legend.” 

Both views are based upon the strong realistic 
impression which is the striking artistic character- 
istic of the figure. For it is simply the figure of an 
undeveloped boy, so cleverly enlarged that not a char- 
acteristic of the type is lost, although the species has 
become the giant. In every aspect of the technique 
of statue-making, the science shown is remarkable. 
When one realizes that a youth of twenty-four, with 
the aid of a small working model of wax, made this 
colossus from a piece of marble already considered 
spoiled by another sculptor, the correctness of eye 


implied, and also the exactitude and intricacy of cal- 


174 ITALIAN SCULPT OGRE 


culation shown in getting out the figure, posed appro- 
priately on the whole, proves it to be the work of 
one who is already a master of his art. So well 
planned is the distribution of weight that there is 
necessary for external support only that fragment of 
the block upon which the right leg rests. The 
bodily forms are ‘defined with much accuracy, and 
despite the general angularity and disjointedness natu- 
ral to the undeveloped type, the flow of line is con- 
tinuous and full of vigor. The modelling shows 
the sensitive chisel of a knowing master. Notice 
the muscles of the upraised forearm, the bones of the 
thorax, and in the knee the difference between bone 
and muscle. The turn of the head makes such a 
chance as Michelangelo well liked for the modelling of 
straining neck muscles. The knitted brows and the 
heavily massed hair recall the St. George of Dona- 
tello, but the expression of the face is not, as in the 
former, an almost wistful look of boyish earnestness, 
but the fierce glare of an angry young giant. Could 
we see the powerful young figure in the place chosen 
for it by the Florentines, guarding the entrance of 
the Palazzo Vecchio, we might be enabled to enjoy 
without fatigue, as is not possible in its present situa- 
tion, the realistic force of the impression. The niche 
which it now occupies was planned for it, and is as 


sufficiently large as any indoor space could be. To 


MICHELANGELO 175 


be sure, the reasons for surrounding it with Fra 
Angelico’s most miniature-like work are obscure.  In- 
deed, the dominating presence of the David sometimes 
follows one into // Paradzso and prevents heart-whole 
participation in the rapture of tiny circling saints. 
But the real reason, I think, for the lapses in enjoy- 
ment which are sure to occur during one’s contem- 
plation of the David, is found in the fact that the 
young sculptor has chosen, as an older sculptor would 
not have chosen, to represent the most awkward state 
in the development of the human body, and_ every 
defect of development is emphasized by colossal size. 
So that, although the thing is so well done that 
it communicates the sensations of physical energy 
directly and with a rush, it is not, after all, a form 
that can steadily invigorate, for it is the arrest in 


stone of a transition in growth. 


SECOND PERIOD 


Between the year 1504, whose month of May saw 
the great David dragged through the streets to its 
place before the Signoria, and the year 1520, when 
Michelangelo began his plans for the tombs of the 
Medici in San Lorenzo, which are the exponents of 
his second manner in sculpture, there had elapsed six- 
teen years. And in these sixteen years, at the best 
working period of a man’s life, this man had suffered 


176 ITALIAN SCULPIURE 


disappointment and disillusion; and, most insupport- 
able of all, his artistic energy had been hindered and 
forced for many long years to find its outlet in paint- 
ing. When, therefore, he comes again to work unin- 
terruptedly at sculpture, he brings to it a radically 
different set of feelings which demand relief, and a 
hand and eye which painting has taught new effects. 
Lost as they soon are in other impressions, such 
effects are perhaps what one notes at first glance 
upon entering the shadowy chapel of San Lorenzo, 
which contains the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ 
Medici. As in the Sistine one may mark the sculptor 
expressing himself in terms of painting, so here in 
slighter degree one may see the use of methods 
which painting practises to obtain its light and shade 
values. In some places the stone is highly polished 
for the emphasis of high lights, in others left rough 
for shadow quality, and the composition of the figures, 
determined of course by other motives than the desire 
to follow picturesque methods, is yet such that it 
reénforces picturesque effects. 

The two seated statues framed in their recesses 
might be analyzed from any selected point of view 
into light and shade compositions, and it is evident 
that they were carefully planned with reference to the 
amount and direction of the light from the lantern 


above. They are in no sense portraits of the men 


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Toms oF GIULIANO, Duca bI NEMOURS 
GIULIANO, NIGHT, DAY 


Sacristy S. Lorenzo, Florence 


MICHELANGELO 177 


whose names they bear, and whose bones rest in the 
sarcophagi at their feet. A fondness for contrast in 
ideas has decided that they typify the two extreme 
types of mankind,—the military hero and the thinker. 
Perhaps they do. It is nevertheless significant that, 
while the one goes by the name “II Pensieroso,” The 
Thoughtful One, The Thinker, a proof that we welcome 
it as a worthy image of one of a common stock of 
definite conceptions, the other stands for no clear- 
cut conception which should force upon it an indis- 
putable epithet. ’ 

The Giuliano is a well-composed and_ strongly 
modelled figure, which repays study by giving the 
eye an education in surface values. There is no sat- 
isfactory meaning to be attached to his action. For 
the turn of the head shows absorption in some spec- 
tacle, and the position of the legs implies that he is 
about to rise and act; but, in contradiction, his thin, 
nervous hands are relaxed, one of them touches, with- 
out grasping, the baton of office, while the other rests 
supinely upon his knee. It is merely the turn of 
the head and the outward direction of the gaze 
which we interpret as an interest in the objective 
which makes the contrast of this figure of Giuliano 
with the figure called “Il Pensieroso,” whose absorption 
in the subjective is unmistakable. 


Indeed, there is no chance of disagreeing about the 


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178 ITALIAN SCUCPRUR 


meaning of The Thinker. It is eloquently set forth, 
writ large in the relation of arm and head, the tradi- 
tional attitude assigned to meditation, and more subtly 
to be read in the pose of the body, which rests its 
full weight with the least possible exertion of muscu- 
lar force, and as if it were insensible to messages from 
the outer world. The impression given, that the 
attention has withdrawn from outer in order to con- 
centrate itself upon inner phenomena, is enhanced by 
the treatment of the face,—that register of conscious 
sensation. For it is left partially unfinished, the heavy 
shadow of the helmet falls over the eyes, sending 
them back into their sockets, and, since the finger on 
the lip hides the expression of the mouth, the facial 
expression may be harmoniously supplied by the 
imagination. 

Although, as I have said, the seated figures hint in 
their composition at a pictorial training, it is not in 
them but in the four nude figures below that Michel- 
angelo continues a treatment of form which, begun in 
the ceiling of the Sistine and ending there also in 
the vehemence and mannerism of the Last Judgment, 
finds here the apex of its effect. What that effect is 
may perhaps be come at by analyzing the material 
which our eyes can get for us. | 

The mind seizes upon the first data furnished by 
the eye, in order to recognize the object to which its 


MICHELANGELO 
Toms oF LoRENZO, DucA DI URBINO 
‘J, PENSIEROSO,” DAWN, TWILIGHT 


Sacristy S. Lorenzo, Florence 


Ld 


MICHELANGELO — 179 


attention is directed, in order to place it, if possible, 
in some known category, to call it by its name. Now 
in the endeavor to recognize these figures, we review 
the categories in which we are accustomed to place 
the figures represented in art, without finding one to 
which their characteristics will admit them. That 
they are neither historic individuals nor calendared 
saints, is obvious at the first glance. Nor in body or 
soul are they the gods or the heroes as we know 
them from classic art and mythology. Powerful and 
strange as they are, they are not types of the primeval 
human, for the organized structure and the small and 
refined extremities suggest no struggle for existence 
with the brute forces of nature. It is plain that there 
is no place for them in our traditional nomenclature. 
Yet after all they are made in our image, and our 
nature gives us the key which opens to our compre- 
hension theirs. Entering in by imagination, we are 
changed to their likeness and take on an ultra-human 
nature, like to ours in kind, but beyond it in intensity 
and scope. 

After placing an object in or out of a category, and 
settling in some fashion upon what it is, the next step 
is to say to oneself how it is, and what it is doing, to 
define its action and state by means of its attitude and 
structure. The attitude of each of these figures is 
one of contortion. The limbs are drawn up, the torso 


180 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


is twisted, the outlines from every side show the con- 
traction and swelling of the muscles that move the 
body. Such muscular contortion has several natural 
explanations to eyes which seek cause for effect. It 
may be explained as the result of violent action against 
some outside force, as it is in the struggle of Laocoén 
and his sons with the serpents. Or it may be the 
result of physical suffering; the tortured martyrs might 
thus have writhed. Muscular contortion must, in the 
nature of things, spell suffering and struggle to our 
minds. Now, if there is no cause visible to explain that 
struggle and suffering as a physical result, no ser- 
pents, no martyr’s wheel, we leap at once to the con- 
viction that it is the struggle and suffering of the 
spirit which distorts the body. Thus, for the first 
time in sculpture, is bodily attitude made expressive of 
spiritual struggle. | 

Not one of the figures counterfeits a pose with which 
we are familiar in sculpture or in real life, or even 
regard as possible except as one of the kaleidoscope 
postures of a gymnast. Yet, because we recognize 
that the sculptor has deviated from the normal in 
constructing these figures, we accept as possible to 
them, ultra-human as they are, attitudes which in real- 
istic figures would be intolerable. In the first place, 
the proportion of parts makes for itself a new formula. 


In comparison with classic canons, the heads are too 


MICHELANGELO 181 


small, the forearms and the lower legs are too slight 
for the broad shoulders and huge torso. What differs 
most strikingly from the structure of classic figures as 
from that of the normal human is the strange empha- 
sis laid upon certain portions. The muscles stand out 
upon the shoulders, the breast, and the thighs, in fact, 
those muscles which are used in feats of strength are 
much exaggerated. Such abnormal development would 
be explained in a Hercules, or in a fighting giant, by 
the character and the action. Here it makes an 
impression of power unapplied, so that we feel that 
thwarted strength is reacting upon itself. Stranger 
than this emphasis of the motor muscles is that of the 
muscles of the lower torso, which are mapped out as 
if by an anatomist who wishes to demonstrate their 
position and relations. They are to be discerned as 
plainly as if the levelling layer of fat beneath the skin 
had been withdrawn. To comprehend Michelangelo's 
exaggeration, one has but to compare his Day with the 
Venus of Melos, or, more profitably, his Twilight with 
the Theseus of the Parthenon, since the upper part of 
the torso has in both figures much the same attitude. 
The lower part of the Theseus is in a normal reclin- 
ing posture, while that of the Twilight is twisted to 
bring into play the muscles of abdomen and stomach. 
It should be remembered, too, that the Theseus was 


long exposed to the effects of weather; yet it must 


182 ITALIAN “SCULPTURE 


always have given the idea of a bony structure, fas- 
tened together by muscles, and holding within it the 
vital organs. The Twilight appears in comparison 
to be an elastic muscular structure in which are em- 
bedded the bones, and which holds loosely the heavy 
vital organs. The difference in imagined sensations 
induced by both is naturally great. In the case of 
Michelangelo's figure, the calling of our attention to 
organs which nature has not emphasized externally, 
and of whose action we are scarcely conscious except 
under conditions of extreme pleasure or pain, heightens 
our impression of the intensity of life in these figures, 
and makes their vitality commensurate, in our fancy, 
with their muscular force. 

To sum up, our consideration of the attitudes and 
structure of the four figures has brought out the facts 
that the contortion of the bodies, the novel propor- 
tions of their members, and the strange emphasis laid 
upon certain parts give us imagined sensations which 
we translate into the idea of the spiritual struggle and 
suffering of beings whose vitality is far beyond that 
of the ordinary human; so far beyond, that, to some 
imaginations, in their persons seem to be typified the 
struggle and suffering of the race. 

The general impression gained from all the figures 
is more or less particularized by the peculiar charac- 
teristics of each one, and is perhaps made more con- 


Se ee ee ee ae 


MICHELANGELO 183 


crete by the names. Of all the figures the Twilight 
gives an outline which most nearly approaches the 
normal. The relaxation of the right shoulder and 
arm, and the droop of the head toward the breast, 
may signify that at the coming on of night the 
exhausted being is sinking to a repose which is 
unsweetened by physical weariness. 

The Dawn is more definite in idea, for we recog- 
nize in its action the natural attitude of one who 
painfully lifts herself from an unrefreshing sleep. The 
deep-set eyes are masked with heavy lids, and the 
wrinkled brow and the half-open mouth give the face 
an expressson of hopelessness which accords with 
the heavy awakening of the body. 

The Day and Night are even more strange in atti- 


tude than the figures of Lorenzo’s tomb, and in outline 


are so unusual to eyes accustomed to read only the 


meanings of the ordinary human outlines that they seem 


to convey their meaning in passionate exclamations. 


In looking at the Day one sees from no point of 
view an outline with which the eye is familiar, for 
the figure is so twisted as to show both back and 
front at the same time, and the muscles are so 
bunched that the outlines seem made of a series of 
short curves. Has this being been suddenly awak- 
ened from sleep by an enemy that he should so 


fiercely draw himself together for defensive action as 


184 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


a wild beast preparing for a spring? The figure is 
unfinished. It is highly polished in parts ; but the 
head is only blocked out—could not be cut down, 
they say, without breaking the marble. The cling- 
ing to it and to the arm of the rough material, 
as well as the shallowness of the undercutting along 
the back, give us leave to fancy that thus, in the 
figure’s seeming effort to detach itself from the block, 
is typified the struggle of the day to separate itself 
from the chaos of dark night. 

It is passing strange that the companion figure of 
the Night should be able to impose upon us the idea 
that it is filled with slumber; for did we regard it as 
the presentment of a normal human figure, we should 
realize the great discomfort of its attitude and the im- 
possibility of maintaining such a pose, asleep or awake. 
But so firmly does the mind hold to its conviction that 
sleep enwraps the figure, that the sensations induced 
by its attitude are not recognized as physical, but pass at 
once into their mental equivalents, and seem the suf- 
ferings of a soul which finds in the heavy sleep of 
exhaustion only a half oblivion of despair. Its con- 
sclousness takes no note of the external world, but is 
nevertheless still cognizant of its own pain. The figure 
might well be that Melancholia seen by Diirer and 
by Thomson, but here more “subtly of herself con- 
templative.”’ The outlines are more interlaced than 


aqurew 


; 


Bios spate Taba ainctonetetinsi cs Sh 


RTPA ON? fe nd ten? oan ee 


LHDIN ,{OSOUAISNAG TI 5s 
OTADNVTAHOIN 


aseenneniihors: 


a a ee 


ti Paes 


ee ee ee Re eee a a a a 


oP eG eae ee ee ee es WT ee ee Pe ee eee eS ee 


MICHELANGELO 185 


in the Dawn, but the modelling of both head and 
torso suggests a greater nobility of type. In model- 
ling and in outline the bent leg is especially beautiful. 

Once led into the use of the word “beautiful” in 
connection with these figures, the mind begins to 
inquire what satisfaction there is in Michelangelo for 
the sense of beauty. It has been tacitly assumed from 
the beginning, that the “beautiful” in an object of 
art is that quality which, interacting with the senses, 
gives an enjoyment which is originated and deter- 
mined, if not limited, by such interaction; and also 
that, since human senses are not all of the same 
keenness, and because the association of ideas varies 
with the individual, the assertion that this or that in 
a work of art is “beautiful,” is an assertion of indi- 
vidual enjoyment. That there is, however, a “standard 
of the beautiful” in sculpture is evidenced by the fact 
that in the particular case of Michelangelo's sculpture 
the critics show always a tendency to draw distinctions, 
and to say that his works are “expressive,” and “sub- 


lime rather than beautiful.” Now such a_ tendency 


| indicates this at least, namely, that the kind of enjoy- 


ment gained from Michelangelo is not that given by 
sculpture ordinarily. Whether one objectifies his enjoy- 
ment as the quality of beauty, or of sublimity, or of 
expressiveness in the object, it is the same esthetic 
appeal to which each responds according to his 


186 ITALIAN SCULPICRs 


capacity, and which is itself dependent here upon two 
things, — the observer’s ability to read the language of 
the nude, and, once read, his sympathy with its 
meaning. 

It is true that the observer who stands before the 
nudes of Michelangelo neither as an artist nor as an 
anatomist 1s in a position analogous to that of one 
who listens to a play in a foreign language. Although 
he may miss the niceties of meaning in the lines, he 
is perhaps for that very reason more alive and suscep- 
tible to the emotions aroused by the acting. Without’ 
fully understanding the science and the motives of 
Michelangelo’s nudes, the ordinary observer is recep- 
tive of their communication of physical vitality, and 
feels the rush into his consciousness of a power more 
than human, which acquires its great intensity from 
being banked up and afforded no outlet in physical 
exertion; and, with the imagined sensations of thwarted 
physical force so conveyed, there is the simultaneous 
arousal of the ideas and feeling of spiritual struggle. 

Since the individual experience is the measure and 
interpretation of that feeling of spiritual struggle, and 
since spiritual experience, differing more than sense 
experience, has not a fixed vocabulary for its expression, 
each individual makes the common impression word- 
able to himself along a personal line. One may put 


it into terms of religion or ethics, another may see in 


MICHELANGELO 187 


it the apotheosis of his own puny struggle with fate. 
To one who is familiar with Michelangelo's life and 
the history of Florence, it may well seem to symbolize 
both his bitter conflict and the sufferings of an 
enslaved city. The temperament feels what it brings 
the power to feel. Whatever the environment has 
been, if one is akin to Michelangelo in temperament, 
he will feel before these figures the exaltation and 
incorporation of forces whose workings he has felt or 
is Jestined to feel, and he therefore obtains a great 
eesthetic pleasure. As it happens, the generations 
since Michelangelo have shared in that temperament 
so generally that he has expressed them to themselves, 
and in so doing afforded to the modern consciousness 
the relief of defining itself in art. 

Yet as any mode of artistic expression, however 
deep and wide it be, will always be inadequate to all 
sides of human experience, there will always be a 
minority who feel its scope, but whom it does not 
express. Therefore there are temperaments who feel 
Michelangelo’s powerful communication of vitality, but 
who cannot so enjoyably translate it into intimate 
emotion. They feel the lack of that “purgation” of 
emotion, following the display of strong feeling, which 
to them can alone make spiritually invigorating the 
excitement of those feelings by art. His types have 
not to them that nobility that would make for such 


188 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


“purgation.” There is no stronger influx of vitality to 
be gained from the Dawn than from the Venus of 
Melos, and from the Fates of the Parthenon draped 
though they be, and there is in the former a sugges- 
tion of animalism in the abnormal isolation and 
development of the muscles of the breast and abdomen 
which lessens the dignity of its meaning. 

To conclude, then, the imagined sensations in- 
duced by the contemplation of Michelangelo's figures 
are probably the same with all sensitive people, but 
their translation into individual emotions and ideas is 
the cause of differing degrees of zxsthetic pleasure. 

What Michelangelo’s own attitude toward his crea- 
tions was, we can only surmise. He probably never 
- intended them as a conscious revelation of his soul. 
As an artist, he liked to make figures which in outline 
and modelling represented physical force, and called 
into play his scientific and technical powers. And yet, 
because he made his art, probably unconsciously, the 
true outlet for his soul, using marble and chisel as a 
musician uses his instrument, as wordless song, his art 
is a personal confession, and he is, in his self-revelation, 


the first of the moderns. 


CHAPTER VI 


RE OUTSIDE OF TUSCANY 


1 


We Bae oa 1 Oe a 
SCULPTURE OUTSIDE OF TUSCANY 


Hap the aim been, in marshalling between the cov- 
ers of a small book some part of Renaissance sculp- 
ture, to attract the attention of the reader, not to its 
esthetic values, but to the historical and literary values 
which give it intellectual interest, not only would the 
manner of presentation have been different, but the 
matter presented would not have been the same. For 
the objects selected for consideration must have been 
manceuvred to show their relations to their makers and 
to contemporary effort, as well as to our esthetic sense ; 
and not only would they have gathered in that process 
an accretion of biographical anecdote and _ historical 
fact to swell the material presented, but, to satisfy the 
demands of the inventorial and the philosophical and 
the historical interest, it would have been necessary to 
include in the text some mention of the many works 
of the many men who handled the chisel and the clay. 
And had, then, the intention been to show forth the 
interest of this period of sculpture, rather than to make 

191 


192 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


evident its zsthetic appeal, it would not have been 
allowable to limit the field gone over to the notice of 
Florentine masterpieces, thus making the title Italian 
Sculpture practically synonymous with Florentine 
Sculpture. 

Yet, since the aim has been to separate and empha- 
size that side of one of the three great historical peri- 
ods of sculpture which affects us through sensation, to 
attend as it were to the phosphorescent gleam rather 
than to speculate over the conditions causing it, it is 
justifiable to use the most direct means to that end, 
and therefore, for the purposes of realizing its zesthetic 
essence, to consider that Florentine sculpture is synony- 
mous with Italian sculpture, and that, to distinguish the 
aesthetic appeal of the sculpture in Florence is to have 
a general concept of the historical period as compared 
with other periods. For, in the first place, Florence 
contains the best sculpture of the time under discussion, 
and, in the second place, it contains the most of the 
best sculpture, so that there is both quality and an 
accumulation of quality to make strength of impres- 
sion. In the third place, in no other city or town of 
Italy is there an atmosphere so able to give this im- 
pression a clear-cut form, and thus add definiteness to 
depth of comprehension; for Florence has its national 
museum of sculpture, whence art of other appeal is 
really excluded, and its churches and squares are still 


SCULPTURE OUTSIDE OF TUSCANY 193 


rich in works remaining 2 set, breathing freely, un- 
smothered by the antique, or the baroque, or the 
modern; and, moreover, in Florence even the rival art 
of painting, since it treats as its theme the problems of 
form, does not antagonize nor absorb the appeal of 
sculpture, but even in, a way reénforces it. There is, 
to be sure, some store of Renaissance sculpture in 
Rome and in Naples, but it is hidden away in dark 
churches, and is not able to prevail in an atmosphere 
heavy with the baroque and the antique. In Milan 
its infrequent examples are fast being overshadowed by 
modern building. In Venice it surrenders its unique 
appeal as sculpture to join with painting and mosaic in 
the great decorative appeal of Venetian architecture. 
Moreover, were one able to get clear-cut impressions 
of the Renaissance sculpture found outside of Florence, 
and were to add them to his general concept gained 
from Florentine examples, he would not affect his 
zsthetic sum-total, and this for two reasons. First, 
because, for the most part, the sculpture of other places 
will be found to be, when it gives us definite pleasure, 
the work of a Florentine or of the Florentine school. 
This is very evidently true of Tuscany, and it is also 
true for North and South Italy, for their cities im- 
ported better sculpture from Florence than they could 
make themselves. Secondly, when the sculpture is 


actually the product of its own soil, although it has a 


oO 


194 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


genuinely native appeal differing from the Florentine, 
yet such appeal is in strength and quality so insignifi- 
cant that it cannot modify our general concept; and 
therefore to dwell upon it in individual examples 
would be to inflict upon Florentine sculpture a loss in 
proportionate value— would be, in short, to miss the 
wood for the trees, to lose the characteristic shape of 
the constellation one is seeking by looking through a 
telescope at some portion of it. 

Had the range of treatment included a detailed 
criticism of decorative sculpture, the space apportioned 
to non-Florentine work would have been a large part 
of the whole. But, as supplementing only brief 
descriptions of such characteristic masterpieces of the 
masters as can make clear our kind of enjoyment in 
this period of sculpture as distinguished from other 
periods, it is possible to make only a few rough state- 
ments concerning the slightly differing species of 
Renaissance work to be found in Naples, and in 
Milan, and in Venice. 

In Naples to-day the student of art will find that 
his senses are keyed to the appreciation of the 
antique by the splendid collections, and even by the 
reproductions of the shops, unworthy parodies as they 
are; and after he ferrets out in the crowded churches the 
slender store of Renaissance work, he is often unable 


to be more moved by it than by the votary fripperies 


Beet LURE OUTSIDE OF TUSCANY 195 


with which a superstitious population has almost cov- 
ered it. The pre-Renaissance tombs best hold their 
own against the antique, and the realistic tableaux in 
painted terra-cotta are interesting and often momen- 
tarily impressive in their naturalism of attitude and 
expression. A typical development of Neapolitan 
sculpture there could not be, for the political agitation 
of Naples during the Renaissance period rendered the 
evolution of art impossible, and made necessary the 
importation of sculpture from Florence and from 
Lombardy. 

Indeed, the true home of the terra-cotta figures of 
Naples is North Italy, and they illustrate, especially 
in Milan and Modena, one of the happiest phases of 
the art of Lombardy, which, on the whole less intel- 
lectual, less poetic, and less scientific than the sculp- 
ture of Florence, has much to attract in its grace, its 
sprightly realism, its portraits, and its richly decorative 
effects. Yet of the myriad statues of the Milan Cathe- 
dral, the output of its school of sculpture, not one has 
conspicuous distinction, and the majority are the work 
of men who did not rise above the level of stone- 
cutting. The Certosa of Pavia is indeed a rich treas- 
ury of North Italian sculpture, and contains also 
much good Florentine work. It is incrusted within 
and without with sculpture of various periods and of 


differing styles; but, of all the regional work, none, 


196 ITALIAN SCULPTURE 


save that of Amadeo, whose name only may here be 
mentioned, can in technique and refinement be classed 
with the sculpture of Florence. 

Of all the non-Tuscan sculpture grafted with the 
Renaissance Florentine, that of Venice was most 
fruitful, and yet most faithful to its proper soil, for it 
maintained always a decorative character and attuned 
itself to the rich, free, sensuous strain of Venetian 
art. Even the works created in Venice by foreign 
sculptors partake of the Venetian spirit, and as seen 
now by the traveller appear to him to be congruous 
elements in architectural effects, whether he stands 
before the rather dry statues of Adam and Eve made 
by Rizzo, the first introduction of Renaissance sculp- 
ture into Venice, or notes, as he must, for they are 
everywhere, the ample, sensuous, pagan types of the 
Venetianized Sansovino. 

What could result from the union of the spirit of 
Florentine sculpture with the Venetian spirit is 
supremely illustrated by the equestrian statue of Col- 
leoni, a production which is the masterpiece of Venice, 
and which has never been surpassed in the equestrian 
sculpture of any time or nation. It was begun by 
Verrocchio the Florentine and completed by Leopardi 
the Venetian, and the share which each had in the 
work is still one of the unsettled questions of art 
criticism. Yet, to whichever side the scale should 


ever liURE OUTSIDE OF TUSCANY 197 


turn, it is evident enough that neither sculptor alone 
could have achieved so perfectly expressive a result. 
For it is the welding of the Florentine’s science and 
distinction of style with the Venetian’s keen sense for 
the external appearances of life which makes the 
whole amply expressive of a personality and an age. 
If we add to our enjoyment of this masterpiece the 
pleasure given, in its similar communication of vitality, 
by Donatello’s Gattamelata, we shall find that the sum 
of esthetic values realized from these two equestrian 
statues is so great that it makes, as it were, an 
individual line of color in that spectrum of esthetic 
values which is characteristic of the Italian sculpture 
of the Renaissance. 


my. 


APPENDIX | 


NERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 


APPENDIX 


GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Historical : 


BURCKHARDT, Zhe Civilization of the Renaissance in Ltaly, trans. by 
Middlemore ; Der Cicerone, best translation the French of Gerard : 
Geschichte der Renaissance. 

Kucier, Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, English editor, Layard. 

Montz, Les Précurseurs de la Renaissance; Histoire de 1 Art pendant 
la Renaissance. 

GEBHART, Les Ovrigines de la Renaissance en Itale. 

LAFENESTRE, JZaitres anciens. 

SYMONDS, (enaissance in Italy, consisting of Zhe Age of the Despots, 
The Revival of Learning, The Fine Arts, Italian Literature, The 
Catholic Reaction. 

GoopyvEaR, Renaissance and Modern Art. 

ScalrE, Florentine Life during the Renaissance. 

Roscor, Lorenzo de’ Medict. 

Vasari, Latest edition in English is that of E. H. and E. W. Blash- 
field and A. A. Hopkins. 


Essays, etc. : 


Taine, La Philosophie de l’Art en Itahe,; Voyage en Ltahe, trans. by 
Durand. 

GauTIER, Voyage en Italie. 

BourceET, Sensations d’ltale. 

Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance; Renaissance Studies 
in Artand Poetry. 

VERNON LEE, Luphorion ; Renaissance Fancies and Studies. 

HeEwLetT?, Larthwork out of Tuscany. 

BLASHFIELD, /falian Cities. 

For an extended bibliography of works treating of the varied aspects 

of the Renaissance, the reader is referred to Vol. IV of Vasart’s Lives, 

edited by E. H. and E. W. Blashfield and A. A. Hopkins. 


201 


202 APPENDIX 


HISTORIES OF RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE 


Perkins, Zuscan Sculptors; Historical Handbook of Itahan Sculpture. 

Scott, Renaissance and Modern Sculpture. 

Bove, Denkmidler der Renaissance Sculptur-Toscanas ; Italienische Bild- 
hauer der Renaissance. 

The Doume Series, Kunstund Kiinstler des Mittelalters und der Neuszett. 

Reymonp, La Sculpture Florentine. 

MELANI, Manuale di Scultura Italiana. 

CicoGnara, Storia della Scultura. 

PERIODICALS, Jahrbuch der Kiniglichen Preussischen Kunstsammlungen ; 
La Gazette des Beaux-Arts; L) Archivio Storico del 0 Arte Italiana ; 
Lhe Portfolio; The American Journal of Archeology. 


A LIST OF THE TITLES AND LOCATIONS OF THE PRINCI- 
PAL WORKS OF THE MOST FAMOUS SCULPTORS 


(As the following lists are intended to aid such travellers as have a 
lively interest in Italian sculpture rather than to assist the earnest stu- 
dent of archeology, they do not pretend to absolute completeness, nor 
to finality of attribution.) 


AMADEO OR OMADEO 


Period of Productivity, 1466-1519. 
Works : 

Pavia. — Certosa: Tomb of Visconti, by Amadeo and Pellegrini ; Por- 
tal of the Chiostro Piccolo, by Amadeo and the Mantegazza. S. Lan- 
franco: Tomb of S. Lanfranco. BreRcamo.—S. Maria Maggiore : 
Facade and Portal of Colleoni Chapel ; Tomb of Medea Colleoni ; 
Tomb of Colleoni. Isota BELLA. — Borromei Tombs. 


AMMANNATI 


Period of Productivity, 1540-1571. 
Works : 
FLORENCE. — Piazza Signoria: Fountain. Papua.— Eremitani: Tomb 
Benevides. VILLA pI CASTELLO, near FLORENCE. — Hercules and 
Anteeus (?) ; Colossal Statue of the Apennines (?). 


APPENDIX 203 


BANDINELLI 


Period of Productivity, 1512-1555. 
Works : 

FLORENCE. — Duomo: St. Peter. Opera del Duomo: Parts of Choir 
Rail and High Altar. Piazza Signoria: Hercules and Cacus. Pa- 
lazzo Vecchio : Portrait Statues. Bargello: Adam and Eve ; Bronze 
Statuettes. Piazza S. Lorenzo: Monument of G. delle Bande Nere. 
Santa Croce: The Dead Christ; God the Father. Annunziata: 
Pieta. Palazzo Pitti: Bacchus. Rome.—Santa Maria sopra 

- Minerva: Tombs of Leo X and Clement VII. Lorero.— Bas- 
relief. 

GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA 
References. — Desjarpins, La Vie et ? Giuvre de Jean Bologna ; Roskn- 
BERG, in Dohme Series. 
Period of Productivity, 1559-1608. 
Works : 

FLORENCE.— Bargello: Mercury; Virtue Conquering Vice; Various 
Statuettes. Loggia de’ Lanzi: Rape of the Sabines; Hercules and 
Nessus. Piazza Signoria: Equestrian Statue of Cosimo I. Piazza 
dell’ Annunziata: Equestrian Statue of Ferdinand I. Annunziata: 
Reliefs. Orsanmichele: St. Luke. Boboli Gardens: Fountain. 
Botocna.— Fountain. Lucca.—Cathedral: Altar. Vitia PErRata. 
— Fountain. Grnoa.— University: Works. Venice. — Chapel 
Salviati. 

CELLINI 
References. — Mounier in Les. Artistes Célebres ; Pion, Benvenuto Cel- 
Aint orfevre, médailleur, sculpteur; CELLINI, Autobiography and 
Treatises, translated into English by Symonds and by Ashbee. 
Period of Productivity, 1518-1571. 
Works: 

FLORENCE. — Loggia dei Lanzi: Perseus. Bargello: Models for 
Perseus; Relief Pedestal Perseus; Bust of Cosmo I. Rome. — 
Palazzo Altoviti: Bust of Bindo Altoviti. Maprim.— Escurial : 
Crucifix. Paris.— Louvre: Nymph of Fontainebleau. VIENNA. 
—Salt-cellar of Francis I. For various medallions, cups, etc., 
attributed to Cellini, see the authorities named above. 


204 


APPENDIX 


CIVITALI 


References. — YRIATE, Alatteo Civital. 
Period of Productivity, 1457-1500. 
Works : 
Lucca.— Cathedral: Tomb of Pietro Noceto; Monument of Do- 


menico Bertini; Altar of St. Regulus; Pulpit; Parapet of Choir ; 
St. Sebastian; Tabernacle; Holy Water Vessels. S. Frediano: 
Font. S. Michele: Madonna(?). S. Romano: Monument of 
San Romano. S. Pietro: Tomb of San Pellegrino(?). Museo: 
Bust of Christ; Annunciation. FLORENCE.— Bargello: Faith ; 
Bust of Christ; Relief of Girl with Chain. GrENoa.— Cathedral : 
Chapel of San Giovanni; Allegorical Figure; Frieze; Virgin. 
BERLIN. — Head in Relief. 


DONATELLO 


References. — MUNTz, SEMPER, SCHMARZO, TscupI, MILANESI, MELANI, 


CAvALUCCI, ROSENBERG, HOPE REa. 


Period of Productivity, 1406-1466. 
Works : 
FLORENCE.— Cathedral: Exterior, Two Prophets ; Interior, St. John ; 


Joshua; Poggio. Campanile: Four Statues. Baptistery: Tomb 
Pope John. Orsanmichele: St. Peter; St. Mark. Bargello: Mar- 
zocco ; David in bronze; David in marble; St. George; Cupid; 


- Bust of Youth; Bust of Niccolo Uzzano (?); Statue of St. John 


Baptist ; Relief of Young St. John; Relief of Crucifixion ; Bronze 
Head (?). Operadel Duomo: Cantoria. Santa Croce: St. Louis ; 
Annunciation ; Crucifix. Loggia de’ Lanzi: Judith. S. Lorenzo: 
Tomb and Decoration of Sacristy; Singing Gallery; Pulpits. 
Palazzo Riccardi: Medallions. Palazzo Martelli: St. John ; David. 
SIENA. — Cathedral: Reliefs and Statuettes of Font; Relief of 
Madonna; St. John. Praro.— Duomo: Pulpit. Papua.—S. 
Antonio: Fragments of High Altar now restored; Equestrian 
Statue of Gattamelata. Napites.—S. Nilo: Tomb Brancacci. 
Museum: Head of Horse. Venice.— Frari: St. John. FAgnza. 


APPENDIX 208 


— Museum: Two Saints. Lonpon.— Relief St. Cecilia (?). 
SouTH Kensincton.— Relief of Dead Christ; Relief Delivery of 
Keys to Peter. Beritin.— Museum: Pazzi Madonna; Bust; St. 
John. Paris.— Louvre: Madonnas ; Relief Flagellation ( ?). 


AGOSTINO DI DuccIo 


Period of Productivity, 1442-1481. 
Works : 

Mopena. — Cathedral: Reliefs of Facade. Rimmt.—S. Francesco: 
Portions of Interior Decoration ; Tabernacle ; Tomb of Malatesta. 
PeruciA. — Cathedral: Tomb of Bishop Baglione ; Relief. S. Ber- 
nardino: Sculptures of the Facade. S. Domenico: Altar. FtLor- 
ENCE. — Ognissanti: Tabernacle. Bargello: Relief of Marcus 
Aurelius ; Bronze Plaque of the Crucifixion (?). 


LORENZO GHIBERTI 


References. — PERKINS, Ghibertt et son Ecole ; Montz, Les Primittfs ; 
| ROSENBERG, in Dohme Series. 
Period of Productivity, 1401-1452. 
Works : 
FLORENCE. — Bargello: Trial Panel of the Concours; Bronze Reli- 
quary. Baptistery: First and Second Pair of Gates. Orsanmichele : 
St. John Baptist, St. Matthew, and St. Stephen. Cathedral: Relli- 
quary of St. Zenobius. Srena.— Duomo : Two Reliefs of Fonts. 


ALESSANDRO LEOPARDI 


Period of Productivity, 1478-1515. 
Works : 

VENICE. —S. Giovanni e Paolo: Tomb Vendramin (?). Piazza S. 
Marco: Bronze Standards. S. Marco, Chapel Zeno: Portions of 
Tomb Cardinal Zeno. Piazza S. Giovanni e Paolo: Pedestal of 
Equestrian Statue of Colleoni, and Execution of Statue. 


206 APPENDIX 


BENEDETTO DA MAIANO 


Period of Productivity, 1471-1497. 
Works : 

FLORENCE. — Bargello: S. Giovanni; Bust of Mellini ; Candelabri ; 
La Giustizia (?). S. Croce: Pulpit. §. Maria Novella: Tomb 
Strozzi. Palazzo Vecchio: Door. Misericordia: Madonna. San 
GIMIGNANO. — Cathedral: Bust Onofrio Vanni; Altar ; Santa Fina. 
S. Agostino: Altar; S. Bartolo. Srena.—S. Domenico: Ciborium. 
Nap_es. — Monteoliveto: Altar. Praro.— Madonna dell’ Ulivo. 
FaENnza. — Cathedral: Monument S. Savino. 


MICHELANGELO BUONAROTTI 


References. — Lists of the works in all languages, which form an ex- 
tensive bibliography of Michelangelo, may be found in Vol. IV of 
Vasari’s Lives, compiled by E. H. and E. W. Blashfield and A. A. 
Hopkins ; in List of the Principal Books relating to the Life and 
Works of Michelangelo, by Mr. Charles Eliot Norton; and in Za 
Libliographie Michelangelesque, by Anatole de Montaiglon ; and 
in Vita di Michelangelo Buonarotti, by A. Gotti. 

Period of Productivity, 1490-1540. 

Works: 

FLORENCE. — Bargello: Mask of Faun (?); Apollo; Bust of Brutus : 
Bacchus ; Relief of Madonna; Victory; Adonis; David. S. Lo- 
renzo, New Sacristy: Tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano dei Medici : 
Madonna and Child. Accademia: David ; S. Matthew. Cathedral : 
Pieta. Casa Buonarotti: Relief of Centaurs. Boboli Gardens: 
Four unfinished figures. BoLtocna.—S. Domenico : Angel; S. 
Petronio. Rome.—St. Peter’s: Pieta. S. Pietro in Vincoli: 
Moses; Rachel; Leah. S. Maria sopra Minerva: Christ. 
Bruces.— Notre Dame: Madonna. Srena.—Altar  Piccolo- 
mini (?). Lonpon.— Burlington House: Relief of Madonna. 
South Kensington: Cupid. 


MINO DA FIESOLE 


References, Bopr, in Dohme Sertes. 
Period of Productivity, 1454 (?)-1484. 


APPENDIX 207 


Works (see Sig. Gnoli, in Archivio Storico) : 

FLORENCE. — Bargello: Busts of Piero and Giovanni di Cosimo dei 
Medici, and of Rinaldo della Luna; Profile Reliefs of Girl and of 
Marcus Aurelius ; Tabernacle ; Two Reliefs of Madonna and Child. 
Badia: Relief of Madonna ; Tombs of Giugni and of Count Hugo. 
S. Croce: Tabernacle. 5S. Ambrogio: Tabernacle. Palazzo Mar- 
telli: Madonna. Firsote.— Cathedral: ‘Tomb and Bust (?) of 
Bishop Salutati; Altar. Emporit.— Pieve: Madonna. PrERuGIa.— 
S. Pietro: Tabernacle. Rome.—SS. Apostoli: Madonna of Tomb 
Riario. S. Agostino: Relief of Tomb Piccolomini. St. Cecilia: 
Tomb Forteguerra. Grotte Vaticane: Tomb Pope Paul II. 
Minerva: Madonna of Ferrici Tomb; Tomb Tornabuoni.  S. 
Maria del Popolo: Tomb della Rovere (?). Prato. — Cathedral: 
Pulpit. Brrrin.— Museum: Bust of Niccolo Strozzi; Tonda of 
Madonna; Bust of Girl. Paris. — Louvre: Bust S. Giovanni. 


ORCAGNA 


Bibliography.— Dospert, in Dohme Series; FRANCESCHINI, L’ Oratorio 
del San Michele in Orto in Firenze. 
Works : 
FLORENCE. — Orsanmichele: ‘Tabernacle, Orcagna’s only authentic 
work as a sculptor. 
THE PISANI 


Bibliography. — Doppert, in Dohme Series, Die Pisani; GEBHART, Les 
Origines te la Renaissance; Muniz, Les Précurseurs; RUSKIN, 
Val a’ Arno, in Oxford Lectures of 1873; SUPINO, in Archivio 
Storico. | 

Period of Productivity, Niccola, 1260-1278; Giovanni, 1274-1320 ; 
Andrea, 1330-1340. 

Works, Niccola: 

Botocna. — S. Domenico: Bas-reliefs of Tomb of San Domenico. 
Lucca. —S. Martino: Lunette of The Deposition. Pisa. — Bap- 
tistery: Pulpit. Srena.— Duomo: Pulpit. Prrucia.— Fountain. 

Works, Giovanni : 

Pisa. — Baptistery : Madonna of the Portal. Camposanto: Madonna. 

Cathedral: Reliefs of the Choir; Ivory Madonna of the Sacristy. 


208 APPENDIX 


Perucia. — Fountain, Lower Reliefs. S$. Domenico: Tomb of Bene- 
dict IX. Pisroya.—S. Andrea: Pulpit and Crucifix. Prato. — 
Cathedral: Madonna. Orvirro.— Madonna (?). FLORENCE. — 
Opera del Duomo: Figures of Christ and Santa Reparata (?). 
Works, Andrea : 
FLORENCE. — Baptistery : Bronze Gates. Campanile: Bas-reliefs. 


THE POLLAIUOLI 


References. — Hess, Zes Médatlleurs de la Renaissance. 
Period of Productivity, Antonio, 14 56-1493; Piero assists Antonio. 
Works : 

FLORENCE. — Bargello: Terra-cotta Bust of Young Warrior ; Bronze 
of Hercules and Anteus. Opera del Duomo: Silver Relief. 
Rome. — St. Peter’s: Tomb of Sixtus IV; Tomb of Innocent 
VIII. Forit.— Museum: Bust of P. Ordelaffi (?). Bosron, — 
Collection of Mr. J. Quincy Shaw: Bust of Warrior (?) 


JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA 


References. — CorNELIUS, Jacopo della Quercia; SipNry Cotvin, Port- 
Jotlio, February, 1883. 

Period of Productivity, 1406-1436. 

Works : 

Lucca. — Cathedral: Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto. S. Frediano : 
Tombs and Altar of the Trenta Family. Siena. — Duomo: Bap- 
tismal Font. Museum of Duomo: Fragments of the Fonte Gaia. 
Piazza della Signoria: Reproduction of the Fonte Gaia. BoLocna,. 
—S. Petronio: Portal. S. Giacomo Maggiore: Tomb of Benti- 
voglio. Paris. — Louvre: Madonna (?). FERRARA. — Duomo: 
Madonna (?). 


ANTONIO Rizzo 


Period of Productivity, 1462-1474. 
Works : 
VENICE. — Ducal Palace: Statues of Adam and Eve. Frari: Tomb 
Doge Tron. Museum Carrer: Bust of Youth. 


APPENDIX 209 


THE DELLA ROBBIAS 


References. — List of works in Les Della Robbia, by Cavalucci and 
Molinier, and in the Catalogue of Works in the South Kensington 
Museum, by Robinson; Bode, Die Kunstlerfamilie della Robdia, 
in the Dohme Series; Marquand, in the American Journal of 
Archeology for 1891, 1893, 1894 ; Burlamacchi, Luca della Robbia. 
For magazine articles, see Poole’s Index. 

Period of Productivity: Luca, 1430-1466; Andrea, 1450-1528; Gio- 
vanni, 1497-1529 (?). 

Works: For full lists of the works of the Dela Roddia, see the authori- 
ties referred to above, and also Bode, in Ver Cicerone ; Milanesi, 
in Vasari’s Lives, and Barbet de Jouy, Les Della Robbia. ‘The 
following list gives only familiar and easily accessible works. 

Works of Luca: 

FLORENCE. — Cathedral: Sacristy Doors; Angels; Lunettes of the 
Resurrection and the Ascension. Campanile: Five Reliefs. Opera 
del Duomo: Cantoria; Reliefs. Orsanmichele: Armorial Medal- 
lions. Bargello: Two Reliefs in Marble, the Crucifixion and the 
Deliverance of St. Peter; Madonna of the Apple ; Madonna of the 
Roses; Madonna of San Pierino; Madonna seated with Child ; 
Adoring Madonna. Santa Croce: Capella Pazzi. Santa Trinita: 
Tomb of the Bishop Federighi. Hospital of the Innocenti: Lu- 
nettes; Madonna. Via dell’ Agnolo: Madonna with Angels. San 
Miniato: Ceiling of the Chapel of the Crucifix; Ceiling of the 
Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal. Pisroja.—San Giovanni 
Fuorcivitas: The Visitation (?). BERLIN. — Museum: Madonna ; 
Madonna with Angels. Paris. — Louvre: Madonna with Saints ; 
Madonna with Angels. Cluny Museum: Medallions. SouTH 
KENsINGTON. — Museum: Coat of Arms of King René of Anjou. 
New York. — Metropolitan: Madonna. Boston. — Collection of 
Mr. J. Quincy Shaw: Madonna. 

Works of Andrea: 

FLoRENcE. — Bargello: Madonnas, Numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 23, 39, 
49, 52, 71; St. Catherine ; Head ofa Boy. Accademia: Madonna ; 
Assumption ; Resurrection. Hospital of the Innocenti : Bambini; 


P 


210 APPENDIX 


The Annunciation. Loggia di San Paolo: Two Saints. Museo 
del Duomo: Madonna. Hospital of S$. M. Nuova: Madonna. 
Arezzo. — Cathedral: Madonna; Crucifixion; Altar. §S. M. in 
Grado: Altar. S. M. delle Grazie: Altar. Prato. — Cathedral; 
Lunette of Portal. Madonna del Buonconsiglio: Altar and 
Statues of Saints. Madonna delle Carceri: Medallions of the 
Evangelists. SieNA.— The Osservanza: The Coronation. La 
VERNA. — Altars, with the Annunciation ; the Madonna della Cin- 
tola; the Adoration ; the Crucifixion ; the Ascension. Bertin. — 
Museum: Madonna and Saints; the Annunciation. Sourn Ken- 
SINGTON. — Museum: Madonna; Adoration of the Magi. New 
York. — Metropolitan: Altar-piece. 
Works of Giovanni: 

FLORENCE. — Bargello: Annunciation ; Christ and the Samaritan ee | 
Presepio ; the Deposition; the Madonna, with Santa Umilta and 
San Giovanni; Madonna, with the Child and St. John; Sant’ 
Orsola ; San Francesco ; Frieze of Christ and Saints ; Lunette, the 
Annunciation, Via Nazionale: Tabernacle. S. M. Novella: Font. 
Certosa: Medallions. Pisroya.— Ospedale del Ceppo: Frieze of 
the Seven Works of Mercy. Works at VOLTERRA, BOLSENA, VERNA, 
Barca, and AREZzo. 


THE ROSSELLINI 


References. — Bong, in Dohme Series. 
Period of Productivity, Bernardo, 1440-1491 ; Antonio, 1456-1470. 
Works, Bernardo : 

FLORENCE. —S. Croce: Tomb Bruni. §. Maria Novella: Tomb 
Beata Villani. Bargello: Bust S. Giovanni; Bust Battista Sforza(?). 
Pistoia. —S. Domenico: Tomb Lazzari. Emport.— Misericordia : 
Annunciation. 

Works, Antonio : 

FLORENCE. — Bargello: Tabernacle; Madonna and Child ; Bust 
Sassetti ; Bust Palmieri; Statuette S. Giovanni ; Statue S. Giovanni ; 
Nativity ; Head of Boy. S. Croce: Madonna del Latte. Prato. — 
Cathedral: Pulpit. Frrrara.—S. Giorgio: Lunette. Empoil.— 
Pieve : St. Sebastian. NapLes.— Monteoliveto : Nativity ; Tomb. 


APPENDIX 211 


SOUTH KENSINGTON. — Bust. BrrLIN. — Museum: Madonnas. 
SAN Miniaro. — Tomb of Cardinal of Portugal. 


THE SANSOVINI 


References. — SCHOENFELD, Andrea Sansovino und seine Schule ; MOLI- 
NIER, Venise. 

Period of Productivity, Andrea, 1490-1529 ; Jacopo, 1512-1567. 

Works, Andrea: 

FLORENCE. — Baptistery: Group of Baptism. 5S. Spirito: Altar. 
MONTE SANSOVINO. — ‘Two Altars. VOLTERRA. — Baptistery : Fonts. 
GENoA. — Duomo: S. Giovanni; Madonna. Loreto. —S. Casa: 
Reliefs. Romr.— 5S. Maria del Popolo: Tombs of Choir. Ara- 
ceeli: Tomb Vincenti (?). S. Maria in Trastevere: Monument 
Armellini (?). S. Agostino: Virgin and St. Anne. 

Works, Jacopo : 

FLORENCE. — Duomo: S. Jacopo. Bargello: Bacchus. Romr.— 
S. Agostino: Madonna. Papua.—S. Antonio: Bas-reliefs. VEN- 
IcE.— §. Marco: Choir ; Doors of Sacristy. Piazza: Loggetta. 
Ducal Palace : Giants Mars and Neptune. Arsenal: Madonna. 
Chiesetta: Madonna. Frari: S. Giovanni. S. Salvadore: Monu- 
ment Veniero. BERLIN. — Museum: Stucco Models. 


DESIDERIO DA SETTIGNANO 


References. — Bop, in Dohme Series. 
Period of Productivity, 1453-1464. 
Works : 
FLORENCE. — S. Croce: Tomb Marsuppini. S. Lorenzo: Tabernacle. 
Vanchettoni: Infants (?). BERLIN. — Museum: Several Busts in 
Marble and Terra-cotta (?). 


ANDREA VERROCCHIO 


References. — SEMPER, in Dohme Series ; BoprE, in Jahrbuch, Vol. II. 
Period of Productivity, 1464-1488. 


212 APPENDIX 


Works : 

FLORENCE. — Bargello : David ; Bust of Woman. Orsanmichele: 
Christ and St. Thomas. Opera del Duomo: Silver Relief. S. 
Lorenzo Sacristy: Tomb of Cosimo dei Medici. S. Maria Nuova: 
Relief in Terra-cotta. VENICE. — Piazza di SS. Giovanni e Paolo: 
Equestrian Statue of Colleoni, completed by Leopardi. BERLIN. — 
Museum: Entombment; Youth; Putto. Paris. — Collection 
Dreyfus: Bust of a Lady. Boston. — Collection of Mr. J. Quincy 
Shaw: Relief of Madonna (?). 


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